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The film, shot in cinéma vérité-style, depicts the final stages of the disintegrating marriage of a middle-aged couple (John Marley and Lynn Carlin). We are introduced to various groups and individuals the couple interacts with after the husband's sudden statement of his desire for a divorce. Afterwards, he spends the night in the company of brash businessmen and prostitutes, while the wife spends it with her middle-aged female friends and an aging, free- associating playboy they've picked up at a bar. The night proceeds as a series of tense conversations and confrontations occur. 

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The film examines small-town hypocrisy. 

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Tiffany Aching is a 9-year-old girl who literally sees things differently from others. While playing by the river near her home, she sees two tiny blue, kilted men who warn her of a "green heid" in the water. Suddenly a vile green monster, Jenny Greenteeth, appears in the water. Using her brother Wentworth as bait, Tiffany ambushes the beast and cracks it with a frying pan, while Wentworth is completely unfazed, as he is unable to see either the little men or the monster. She goes into town to visit a travelling teacher and comes upon Miss Tick, a witch who has been watching her. Tiffany is told that these little men are the Nac Mac Feegles, who are rough and rowdy fae folk who speak with Glaswegian accents. Miss Tick informs her that she is likely the witch of the wold she resides in, and gives her the toad familiar she carries as a guide before tricking Tiffany out of the tent and disappearing. Tiffany returns home to discover that the Nac Mac Feegles are not only incredibly fast and strong, but afraid of her, as she catches them stealing eggs from under a chicken and a sheep right out of the field. When Wentworth is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies, Tiffany seeks out the help of the Nac Mac Feegles to rescue him, as they are the most powerful otherworldly things she knows and they're more than willing to submit to her will, terrified by one who is not only a witch but one who can read and write. Rob Anybody, and a group of other Feegles including Big Yan and Daft Wullie take her back to their home where she meets the buzzard-aviator Hamish, the bard-Feegle William, and their clan leader the Kelda. Tiffany is told that her brother has been taken by the Queen to her domain in Fairyland, and not only must she take the Feegles to go rescue him, but she must also take up the reins as Kelda, as the current one is about to die. After worming her way out of marrying Rob Anybody, Tiffany goes out of the mound to the field where the Feegles test her First Sight and Second Thoughts by letting her find the entrance to the queen's domain. Once in, Tiffany and the Feegles face several large wolves who the Feegles handily clobber, and several dream-causing blob- people called dromes. Going through drome-caused dreams, she finds Roland, the son of the Baron of her homeland. Tiffany and Roland go through several dreams and the normal dreamscape to eventually find a dream with both Wentworth and the Queen in it. Tiffany narrowly escapes defeat at the hands of the Queen's dream-minions by having Roland release the Feegles from their trapping in a large walnut, and they escape from that dream into one of Tiffany's imagining. Once in that dream, the Feegles and Wentworth are presumed to have perished at the hands of the Queen's trickery, and Tiffany escapes with Roland's unconscious body out back into the dreamscape, heading for the exit, full of regret that she couldn't save her friends. The Queen mocks her inability to save them and her insecurities, but Tiffany reconnects with her homeland's heritage to gain the strength to defeat the Queen at her own game of dreams in the darkest hour. The Feegles who she later meets back up with reveal that the trap the Queen had set wasn't nearly enough to stop the Feegles, and that they and Wentworth are both fine. Tiffany, Roland, Wentworth and the Feegles all return to their homeland, where the Baron mistakenly gives his son all of the credit for saving them, which Tiffany ends up being okay with. Another large influence on the narrative of the story and development of Tiffany's character is her Granny Aching, a hard working, silent, and knowledgeable shepherd. She was the book's definition of a witch. Stories and memories of her are mentioned here and there in the book, and her memory helps Tiffany defeat the Queen at the end. 

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Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for the Company, a human organisation that "builds" habitable planets with techniques and equipment salvaged from the Spindle Kings, an extinct alien race, excelling in terraforming. The expressed aim of the Company's planet building is to create branches of humanity diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity, since the Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal Mindquakes, epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace.Terry Pratchett, Strata (Corgi Books, 1988), 279 All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing false fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees will attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata as practical jokes, like running shoes or other out-of-place artefacts, hoping to cause confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. The Company does not allow this however, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect this, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artefacts are eventually unearthed.Terry Pratchett, Strata (Corgi Books, 1988), 14-15 Kin and two aliens, the four- armed frog-like, paranoid and muscular Kung Marco and Silver, a bear-like Shand, historian and linguist by profession, are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo for an expedition. Jalo, a human who more than a thousand years ago embarked on a relativistic journey has made a stunning discovery: a flat Earth. However, when the team rendezvous on the Kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has a heart attack and dies. Shocked by the large amounts of weapons on-board Jalo's spaceship, Kin has misgivings about the expedition, but Silver and Marco see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel. When the expedition finally arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the medieval Eastern hemisphere of Earth, clearly artificial. It rotates around its hub inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny "stars" affixed to the interior, complete with a small sun, moon and fake planets revolving around it. After their ship is hit by one of the orbiting "planets", Kin, Marco and Silver are forced to abandon ship and land on the flat Earth with the help of their lift- belt equipped suits. A return from the flat Earth now seems impossible, unless they are able to find its mysterious builders, so they embark on a journey to a structure they have spotted at the hub of the Disc, the only thing which does not match geographically with the Earth they know. En route, they encounter the superstitious Medieval inhabitants of the Disc, who believe the end of the world is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the Disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. They also discover a number of other differences. What Kin Arad knows as Reme is called Rome on the Disc, and there is a strange Christos cult that is completely unfamiliar to Kin Arad. Also, Venus is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar- sized) moon Adonis, which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin knows, and led humanity to a heliocentric world view early on.Terry Pratchett, Strata (Corgi Books, 1988), 130-131 Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing; the travellers rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world. In addition, there are real "magical" creatures and objects on the Disc, demons and magic purses and flying carpets – all of them, the travellers realise, highly advanced and sophisticated technological constructs like the Disc itself. Indeed, the world itself is an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. At the very end of the story, Kin comes to suspect that the builders of the flat world in fact constructed the universe as a whole, with the evidence of previous races being hoaxes and the flat world being an inside joke, analogous to the false strata Kin and the Company themselves manufacture, and the occasional hoaxes put in these strata by rebellious employees. Kin and the others eventually reach the hub and Kin makes contact with the Disc's controlling systems. She is told that, despite advanced robotic maintenance, sheer entropy build-up threatens the Disc's further existence. The machines offer their advanced technology, in exchange for Kin's construction of a real replacement Earth for the flat planet's inhabitants. Kin agrees; the implication being that the world she will build is in fact our own Earth. Kin is excited about the massive task at hand; just like Ringworlds Louis Wu, whom she parallels, she is over two hundred years old, and thus constantly in danger of growing tired of life. 

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A young harpist, Imp Y Celyn from Llamedos (spelled backwards, "sod 'em all", a tribute to Llareggub in Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood), comes to Ankh-Morpork in hopes of becoming famous. Unable to afford the Musicians Guild fees, he and fellow unlicensed musicians Lias Bluestone (a troll percussionist) and Glod Glodsson (a dwarf hornblower) form "The Band with Rocks In", named after Lias' tuned rocks. When Imp's harp is destroyed, he acquires a guitar from a mysterious shop, unaware that it contains the awareness of a primordial music that was responsible for bringing the universe into existence. Imp takes the new name "Buddy", as "Imp Y Celyn" literally means "bud of holly", and Lias starts calling himself "Cliff". Meanwhile, Death is upset over the deaths of his adopted daughter Ysabell and her husband, his former apprentice Mort. Their daughter, Susan Sto Helit, was initially raised with an awareness of Death as her grandfather, but they later withheld the truth from her and she forgot about it. She attends boarding school in Quirm, and is content to avoid unpleasant conversations by using her unexplained ability to fade from others' awareness. When Death abandons his post, going on an impromptu sabbatical in an effort to forget the painful memories, the fabric of reality forces Susan to take on his duties and she begins to remember her past. She becomes aware of Buddy when he is scheduled to die in a riot while performing at the Mended Drum, but instead the crowd is overcome by the spirit of "Music with Rocks In", which apparently has no musical merit for objective listeners not themselves possessed by it. After this, Buddy's life is powered by the music instead of by his natural life force. Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler becomes the Band's manager. He hires the troll Asphalt as a roadie to accompany the band on its tour as he books them to play to increasingly large crowds throughout the city and the region, all the while keeping them unaware of the large profits he is earning. Buddy is becoming less and less like himself, and barely seems aware of his surroundings when he is not playing the guitar. Susan tries to protect him from the influence of the music; though she does not acknowledge it, she has developed feelings for him. Meanwhile, the music is affecting many of the people who have heard it, causing them to form their own bands and adopt behaviours associated with the fans of various musical movements on 20th Century Earth. The wizards of Unseen University are particularly affected by this phenomenon, though not Archchancellor Ridcully, who uses the newly invented device Hex and works with Susan in an effort to understand these events. And Mr Clete, the murderous secretary of the Musicians Guild, becomes increasingly unhinged by his inability to stop the Band's unauthorized activities (as they are protected by the music). Buddy wants to perform a free concert at the music's behest, and Dibbler agrees after realizing how much of a profit he can earn through merchandising and concessions. A large number of the copycat bands participate in the largest concert of all time, culminating in the Band with Rocks In's performance. Buddy also performs his own folk song on his harp, which Glod has had repaired, which briefly restores Imp's natural personality and grants him a moment of peace. Afterwards, the band flees from their crazed fans, pursued by the Musicians Guild, Dibbler, Susan, and Death (who has been brought back to his senses by his servant Albert). The music intends to create an immortal legend by crashing the band's coach into a gorge, with no survivors. Susan rescues them, but the music begins to alter the timeline so the band will have died. Death arrives and plays an "empty chord" on the guitar to stop the music, explaining that while he can stop it, only a musician like Buddy can restart it. The music agrees to allow Buddy to live in return for his playing a chord to restart it. Death then destroys the guitar. A new timeline is created in which Clete was the only fatality, although Susan remains aware of the original course of events. She is returned to school (and also has been there all along) with a new self-assurance. The next day, she runs to reunite with Imp upon realizing that, in the new version of events, he came to Quirm instead of Ankh-Morpork and is working nearby. 

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At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian, apologizes to the arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen..." He describes himself as a museum guard who answers questions from visitors coming to see his priceless collected art. He shares the lonely home with his live-in cook and her daughter, Celeste. One afternoon, Circe Berman wanders onto Karabekian's private beach. When he reaches out to greet her, she catches him by surprise with the forward statement "Tell me how your parents died." He tells her the story and proceeds to invite her back to his home for a drink. After a drink and supper, Karabekian invites her to stay with him, as Paul Slazinger does. After a time, he begins to find her charm "manipulative", as she typically gets her way. Mrs. Berman does not respect his abstract art collection, including works by Jackson Pollock. She explores every inch of Karabekian's home, constantly asking him questions. The only place that is off-limits to her is the potato barn. The potato barn is the home of Karabekian's studio and holds his "secret". The barn has no windows, and Karabekian has gone through the trouble of nailing one end shut and immobilizing the other with six padlocks. The mystery of the potato barn has enticed collectors to make outrageous offers and to raise suspicions of stolen masterpieces. Upon help from Berman, Karabekian comes to a realization in his life, that he was merely afraid of people, and opens the painting in the potato barn to the public. 

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Tirant lo Blanch tells the story of a knight Tirant from Brittany who has a series of adventures across Europe in his quest. He joins in knightly competitions in England and France until the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire asks him to help in the war against the Ottoman Turks, Islamic invaders threatening Constantinople, the capital and seat of the Empire. Tirant accepts and is made Megaduke of the Byzantine Empire and the captain of an army. He defeats the invaders and saves the Empire from destruction. Afterwards, he fights the Turks in many regions of the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, but he dies just before he can marry the pretty heiress of the Byzantine Empire. 

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In 1961, a young Abraham Quintanilla and his band "The Dinos" are rejected by a racist white restaurant owner for an audition. They perform for a Mexican nightclub but a riot ensues when they perform American pop music. In 1981, Abraham is married to Marcela Samora, with three children: Abraham III (A.B.), Suzette, and Selena. Abraham discovers Selena's singing talent and decides to create a band called Selena y Los Dinos, with Selena as lead singer, A.B. on bass, and Suzette on drums. The kids are reluctant but grow fond of making music. In the 1980s, the impacts of Reaganomics cause the Quintanillas to go bankrupt and lose their restaurant. They move to Corpus Christi, Texas and Abraham takes the band on the road to support the family. Selena performs at a carnival to a lackluster reception. Selena begins to incorporate more dance and personality into her acts. The band’s success, and its members, mature into local success. In 1990, Selena meets guitarist Chris Pérez when he auditions as the band’s new guitarist. Abraham disapproves of Chris’ heavy metal style, but hires him after Chris agrees to cut his hair. Selena and Chris come to know each other and eventually fall in love. When Chris' former band members trash a hotel suite, Abraham threatens to fire him. A.B. pleads with him to reconsider, pointing out that he is needed for their upcoming tour. Selena and the Dinos begin their tour of Mexico, but promoters are worried when they discover she does not speak Spanish well, but she quickly wins everyone over with her personality and care for her fans. A show almost goes awry when its larger- than-expected crowd rushes the stage. Selena calms the crowd, draws them into a joyous performance, and is accepted as “an artist for the people” in Mexico. Abraham catches her embracing Chris on the tour bus. Enraged, he fires Chris and threatens a heartbroken Selena and the rest of the family with disbandment if she or any of them follow him. Selena and Chris continue their romance behind Abraham's back and eventually elope to the Nueces County Courthouse. They plan to gently break the news to her family, but a radio station announces their marriage. A day later, Abraham tells Selena he is glad she made a mature decision, realizes she felt she had no other choice, and only wants her to be happy. The Quintanillas congratulate them and accept Chris as part of their family and as the guitarist for Los Dinos. Jose Behar and music executives from EMI Latin attend a Selena concert and offer Abraham a chance for Selena to make an English-language album, which Abraham accepts. Selena opens her first Selena Etc. boutique and asks her fan-club president Yolanda Saldivar to manage it. Selena’s album Selena Live! wins a Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American album, begins recording her crossover album, and convinces Chris to have children. Selena’s staff chip in to get her a gift to celebrate. Yolanda says she knows the perfect gift and suggests that they turn all the money over to her so she can shop for it. Yolanda gives Selena a ring that resembles the Faberge eggs she collects, but makes no mention of the rest of the staff who contributed. Abraham calls Selena to a meeting about angry calls from fans who paid to join her fan club, but received nothing. Other funds that Yolanda has been handling cannot be accounted for, and vital business records are missing. Yolanda is summoned to Q-Productions and confronted by Abraham, Selena, and Suzette. Yolanda denies wrongdoing and says she will find the missing documents. Selena is disappointed and angry that her fans were mistreated. Selena enjoys her growing success and plays a show at the Houston Astrodome. Abraham expresses his pride that she has broken down the cultural and racist barriers and found success. On March 31, 1995, Selena meets Yolanda at a Corpus Christi motel to collect her missing business records and is shot dead. Yolanda is arrested after a standoff with the police. As Selena's family, friends, and fans mourn her death, a montage of the real Selena plays during a candlelight vigil. 

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Abby and Ray are driving through a heavy downpour at night, discussing Abby's bad marriage. Ray, a bartender at Marty's Bar, drives to a motel, where they have sex. Abby's husband, Julian Marty, has hired a private detective, Lorren Visser, to follow Abby. Visser takes photos of the tryst and delivers them to Marty. Abby collects some things from home and warns Ray to stay away from the bar. Ray finds Marty on the bar’s back steps, and asks Marty for two weeks pay. Marty refuses and angrily tells Ray it will be funny when Abby at some point looks at Ray and says “I haven’t done anything funny.” Marty attempts to kidnap Abby from Ray's home. He fails, and humiliated, rehires Visser to kill the couple. Visser breaks into Ray's home, steals Abby's gun (a gift from Marty), and once again photographs the sleeping couple through a window. He presents a doctored photo of the couple's "corpses" to Marty as evidence. Marty goes to the bathroom to vomit, then opens the safe to give Visser his fee, secretly placing the doctored photos in the safe as insurance against a potential betrayal by Visser. Visser then shoots Marty with Abby's gun, leaving it at the scene as evidence that she killed Marty. Ray returns to the bar and finds a motionless Marty, with a bullet wound in his chest. Assuming it is Abby who murdered Marty, he puts her gun in Marty's coat pocket and loads the still-bleeding body into the back seat of his car. As he is driving the body away from the crime scene, he perceives movement in his rearview mirror and pulls over in a panic. Returning to the car, Ray finds a barely-alive Marty crawling away from the car. Ray puts him back in the car and drives into a field to dig a grave. Marty is still breathing as Ray drags him to a shallow hole and starts burying him. Marty makes an attempt to use the gun on Ray, but Ray takes it and continues to bury Marty. A distraught and panicked Ray goes to Abby’s new apartment and tells Abby he cleaned up her mess. They are unable to communicate about Marty. Abby, baffled, says “I haven’t done anything funny." By the time Ray leaves, each is convinced that the other has done something to harm Marty. Ray leaves the same pearl-handled gun with Abby. Visser observes first Abby and later Ray visiting the bar office. When leaving the bar, Ray notices that he is being followed, and leaves for Abby's apartment, realizing that she might be in danger. He sits in the dark waiting for Abby. After Abby arrives, Visser, firing from a nearby rooftop with a rifle, shoots Ray through the window, killing him. When Abby hears footsteps approaching, she quickly takes Ray's knife and hides in the bathroom. Visser enters the bathroom to kill her, but finds the bathroom empty and the window open. Reaching out the window, he opens another window to the next room where Abby is hiding. She slams the sash down and drives the knife through his hand into the sill, pinning Visser. He shoots vainly through the wall, finally punches through it and removes the knife while Abby retreats and waits outside the bathroom, holding her gun, now containing one round. As Visser is about to emerge, she fires through the door, hitting him. Abby says, "I’m not afraid of you, Marty". Visser, lying mortally wounded on the bathroom floor, bursts into laughter and responds, "If I see him, I'll sure give him the message." Abby is horrified at the realization that he is not Marty. 

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During a meeting with his superior, M, Bond learns that his latest physical assessment is poor because of excessive drinking and smoking. M sends Bond to a health clinic for a two-week treatment to improve his condition. At the clinic Bond encounters Count Lippe, a member of the Red Lightning Tong criminal organisation from Macau. When Bond learns of the Tong connection, Lippe tries to kill him by tampering with a spinal traction table on which Bond is being treated. Bond, however, is saved by nurse Patricia Fearing and later retaliates against Lippe by trapping him in a steam bath, causing second- degree burns and sending him to hospital for a week. The Avro Vulcan: closest relation to the fictional Vindicator The Prime Minister receives a communiqué from SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a private criminal enterprise under the command of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. SPECTRE has hijacked a Villiers Vindicator and seized its two nuclear bombs, which it will use to destroy two major targets in the Western Hemisphere unless a ransom is paid. Lippe was dispatched to the clinic to oversee Giuseppe Petacchi, an Italian Air Force pilot stationed at a nearby bomber squadron base, and post the communiqué once the bombs were in SPECTRE's possession. Although Lippe has accomplished his tasks, Blofeld considers him unreliable because of his childish clash with Bond and has him killed. Acting as a NATO observer of Royal Air Force procedure, Petacchi is in SPECTRE's pay to hijack the bomber in mid-flight by killing its crew and flying it to the Bahamas. A SPECTRE assassin kills Petacchi once he has delivered the plane, and a crew camouflages the wreck and loads the bombs onto the cruiser yacht Disco Volante for transport to an underwater hiding place. Emilio Largo, second-in-command of SPECTRE, oversees the operations. The Americans and the British launch Operation Thunderball to foil SPECTRE and recover the two atomic bombs. On a hunch, M assigns Bond to the Bahamas to investigate. There, Bond meets Felix Leiter, who has been recalled to duty by the CIA from the Pinkerton detective agency because of the Thunderball crisis. While in Nassau, Bond meets Dominetta "Domino" Vitali, Largo's mistress and Petacchi's sister. She is living on board the Disco Volante and believes Largo is on a treasure hunt, although Largo makes her stay ashore while he and his partners hunt hidden treasure. After seducing her, Bond informs her that Largo arranged her brother's death and recruits her to spy on him. Domino re-boards the Disco Volante with a Geiger counter to ascertain if the yacht has been used to transport the bombs. However, she is discovered and Largo tortures her for information. Bond and Leiter alert the Thunderball war room of their suspicions of Largo and join the crew of the American nuclear submarine Manta as the ransom deadline nears. The Manta chases the Disco Volante to capture it and recover the bombs en route to the first target. Bond and Leiter lead a dive team in a fight against Largo's crew to stop them from moving the bombs into position. Largo corners Bond in an underwater cave and tries to strangle him, but Domino kills Largo with a shot from a spear gun. The fight leaves six American divers and ten SPECTRE men dead, including Largo, and the bombs are recovered safely. As Bond recuperates in hospital, Leiter explains that Domino told Largo nothing under torture and later escaped from the Disco Volante to get revenge on him. Learning that she is also recovering from injuries, Bond crawls into her room and falls asleep at her bedside. 

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The sword Ehrgeiz, legendarily powerful, was sealed away and could only be opened with the Ehrgeiz stone. This stone was made a prize for a fighting tournament, and whoever won, would take the sword. 

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The setting is in the Fall of 1777, during the Saratoga Campaign. 

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Aristotle was the first to use a Greek term equivalent to the Latin phrase deus ex machina to describe the technique as a device to resolve the plot of tragedies. It is generally deemed undesirable in writing and often implies a lack of creativity on the part of the author. The reasons for this are that it does damage to the story's internal logic and is often so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely ending. 

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Three weeks before her 28th birthday, New York City food critic Julianne “Jules” Potter receives a call from her lifelong friend Michael O'Neal, a Chicago sportswriter. Years ago, the two agreed that if unmarried by 28, they would marry each other. Michael tells her that in four days, he will marry Kimmy Wallace, a college student whose father owns the Chicago White Sox. Realizing she is in love with Michael, Jules resolves to sabotage his wedding. Arriving in Chicago, she reunites with Michael and meets Kimmy, who asks her to be the maid of honor. Jules schemes to break up the couple, but her attempt to humiliate Kimmy at a karaoke bar backfires. She manipulates Kimmy into asking her father to offer Michael a job, which Jules knows will anger Michael, but this fails as well. Frustrated, Jules begs her friend George for help, and he flies to Chicago. On George’s advice, Jules prepares to confess her feelings to Michael, but instead tells him that she is engaged to George, hoping to make Michael jealous. George, who is gay, plays along but embarrasses Jules at lunch with the wedding party, singing “I Say a Little Prayer” as the whole restaurant joins in. George flies home, and Jules tells Michael that her “relationship” with George is over. Michael admits to feeling jealous and gives her the chance to confess her own feelings, but she lets the moment pass, and they share a dance as Michael sings “The Way You Look Tonight”. The day before the wedding, at Kimmy's father's office, Jules uses his email account to forge a message from him to Michael's boss, asking that Michael be fired to allow Kimmy’s father to hire him at Kimmy’s insistence. She saves the message rather than send it, but later realizes that Kimmy’s father has unknowingly sent the email. Jules lies to enlist Michael’s help, but they find the office locked. Returning to Jules’ hotel, Michael receives a message from his boss notifying him of the email. Furious, he calls Kimmy, calling off the wedding. The next morning, Jules discovers that neither Michael nor Kimmy have told anyone else that the wedding is off. She tries to manipulate the couple into breaking up for good, but Michael and Kimmy decide to get married after all. Jules finally confesses her love for Michael and kisses him. Kimmy witnesses this and drives away, pursued by Michael, who is followed by Jules in a caterer’s truck. Jules calls George, who assures her that Michael loves Kimmy. Finding Michael at Chicago Union Station, Jules confesses to everything. He forgives her, and they split up to look for Kimmy. Jules finds Kimmy in the bathroom of Comiskey Park. Amid a crowd of onlookers, Kimmy confronts Jules for interfering with Michael. Jules apologizes, assuring Kimmy that Michael truly loves her, and they reconcile. The wedding proceeds, and at the reception, Jules gives a heartfelt speech as Kimmy's maid of honor. Jules and Michael share their goodbyes, both finally moving on. On the phone with George, Jules is surprised to see him at the reception, and they dance together. 

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In 1985, 16-year-old high school student Theodore "Ted" Stroehmann is about to go on a prom date with his dream girl Mary Jensen when he gets his scrotum stuck in a zipper. He is hospitalized when it bleeds after being unzipped, which cancels their date. Ted subsequently loses contact with Mary. Thirteen years later in 1998, 29-year-old Ted is still in love with Mary. On the advice of his best friend Dom, Ted hires private investigator Pat Healy to track her down. Healy discovers that she is an orthopedic surgeon living in Miami, and spending time with her friends and her neighbor Magda. After observing her for a few days, Healy falls in love with Mary. He returns to Providence and lies to Ted about Mary, telling him that she is overweight and has four kids by three different men. Healy quits his job and returns to Miami to pursue her. He resorts to lying, cheating, and stalking to win Mary over. They spend several weeks dating before Mary's friend Tucker, an architect who uses crutches after serious spine damage, exposes him as a fraud. He is enraged after eavesdropping on Tucker lie about Healy being a serial murderer. After subsequently tailing Tucker, Healy discovers him to be a fraud himself: he is an able-bodied pizza American delivery boy named Norm Phipps who is also in love with Mary. For years, Norm has hid how his injury healed, as well as how he had a friend help injure him so he could become Mary's patient, in order for him to get close to Mary and drive away potential rivals. Meanwhile, Ted finds out from one of his old classmates that Healy was lying about Mary. He then drives down to Florida to see her. During the drive down, Ted picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a mass murderer. The murderer leaves a body in Ted's car when Ted is unintentionally caught with a group of gay men while he tries to urinate. Ted is mistakenly arrested for the murder and bailed out by his friend Dom after the police catch the real killer. After Ted finds Mary, they begin dating. He seems to have won her love until an anonymous letter exposes his connection with Pat, and she breaks contact with him. Ted confronts Pat and Norm, and Mary is accosted by Dom, who is revealed to be her ex-boyfriend "Woogie" that she has a restraining order against, and was the one who sent the letter. He wants to reconnect with her as well, which she quickly refuses, so he tries to steal her shoes to satisfy his shoe fetish. Ted, Norm, and Pat arrive, and, when Mary is finally together with all of her deceitful suitors, Ted realizes that the only one who did not resort to lying or manipulation to win over Mary was an ex-boyfriend named Brett, who he learns is National Football League quarterback Brett Favre. Norm had previously confessed to Ted that he lied to Mary about Brett insulting her brother Warren (who lives with an intellectual disability), which was why she ended the relationship. After reuniting Brett and Mary, Ted leaves tearfully until Mary catches up to Ted, saying "I'd be happiest with you". Mary and Ted kiss while singer/songwriter Jonathan Richman, who has periodically narrated the story in song throughout the film, is accidentally shot by Magda's boyfriend, who was trying to shoot Ted as he was also infatuated with Mary. 

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Film publicist Lee Phillips is tasked with promoting Time Over Time, an upcoming movie featuring husband-and-wife stars Gwen Harrison and Eddie Thomas. His job is complicated by the film's eccentric director Hal Weidmann, who refuses to show anyone the film until its premiere at a press junket. Worse, Gwen and Eddie, once "America's Sweethearts", are going through an ugly split. Gwen's affair with co-star Hector Gorgonzolas, who she now lives with, drives Eddie to an emotional breakdown; Eddie's actions lead Gwen to file a restraining order against him, and he moves to a New Age retreat. Lee decides his best chance to promote the film is to convince the press the couple have reunited. Lee enlists the help of Gwen's sister and personal assistant, Kiki, and they persuade Gwen that her tarnished career and public image will benefit if she attends the junket, where she will also be able to serve Eddie divorce papers. Lee bribes Eddie's spiritual guide to convince Eddie he is well enough to attend. At the junket, while Eddie and Gwen are at each other's throats, Lee plants stories to convince the press the couple are reconciling. Gwen encourages Kiki to be her go-between with Eddie; as they spend time together, Kiki and Eddie begin to develop feelings for each other. Hector believes the fake stories that Eddie is trying to win back Gwen, and a public confrontation ends with Eddie knocked unconscious. Kiki tends to Eddie, and they have passionate sex. In the morning, Kiki is furious when Eddie drops everything to talk to Gwen and refuses to admit to being in any other relationship. Regretful, Eddie confesses to Lee that he is in love with Kiki and believes he has lost his only chance with her. Feeling remorse for his role in the drama, Lee encourages Eddie to tell Kiki and end his marriage to Gwen. Weidmann arrives by helicopter with the finished film. The screening begins, and the press, cast, and crew discover that Weidmann abandoned the script and made a "reality movie" instead. The footage, mostly shot with hidden cameras and without the actors' knowledge, shows Gwen as self-centered, conniving and manipulative, while Eddie is a decent man and becomes paranoid as he suspects his wife is having an affair. Gwen is portrayed as the main antagonist with Hector as her lackey. Kiki is presented as an overweight assistant and Eddie's love interest. The cast and crew — particularly Gwen and the studio's owner, Dave Kingman — are offended and confront Weidmann. He announced that he did this as part of his plans to ruin her career after an incident she caused on set when she talked negatively about his previous work. Gwen announces she will sue Weidmann for embarrassing her and invading her privacy, along with Kingman Studios for having not prevented this. Only Eddie is pleased with Weidmann's film, and they agree to work together again. Kiki is also pleased with his direction since the film portrayed her correctly in being stressed out by Gwen and her drama. The angry Hector calls out Gwen for demeaning him in the film. Leaf, Weidmann's daughter, comes to Hector's defense and reveals they had an affair for the past two years. Humiliated, Gwen tries to salvage the situation by announcing she is reconciling with Eddie. He asserts he is finally through with her, and declares his love for Kiki, who reciprocates and stands up to Gwen for the first time. She reveals to everyone Gwen's dirty secrets and mistreatment Eddie and herself were both put through that no one knew about. Kiki tells her off that she is tired of putting her sister's career over her own personal life and wants to be left alone. Gwen tells her that she is fired and will find herself another assistant. After the junket, she admits to the press that she and Eddie are through, blaming her behavior on medication, tries to claim that she loves Hector and that the things she said in the film were false. However, no one believes a word Gwen says and notices that their relationship is disintegrating. Hector embarrasses her in front of the press by telling her that they're over and he never loved her. As Kiki and Eddie prepare to leave together, Lee tells them that the press’ positive response has forced the studio to release the film. After they leave, Lee is jumped on by Gwen's dog. 

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Virginia "Gin" Baker (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is an investigator for "Waverly Insurance". Robert "Mac" MacDougal (Sean Connery) is a professional thief who specializes in international art. A priceless Rembrandt painting is stolen from an office building in New York one night, and Gin is sent undercover to investigate Mac as the chief suspect. She tries to entrap him with a proposition, claiming that she is a professional thief herself, and promises that she will help him steal a priceless Chinese mask from the well-guarded Bedford Palace. Before agreeing, Mac tells Gin his 'Rule Number One': "Never carry a gun: You carry a gun, you may be tempted to use it." They travel to Scotland and plan the very complicated theft at Mac's hideout, an isolated castle. Aaron Thibadeaux (Ving Rhames), apparently the only ally that Mac trusts, arrives with supplies for the heist. While Mac is busy making final preparations, Gin contacts her boss, Hector Cruz (Will Patton), from a payphone, and informs him of Mac's whereabouts. Little does she know that the whole island is bugged, allowing Mac to eavesdrop on their conversation. Mac also makes sure to keep Gin's romantic advances at bay, unsure if she is a true partner in crime or an ambitious career woman on a mission. After they have stolen the mask, Mac accuses Gin of planning to sell the mask to a buyer in Kuala Lumpur and then turn him in. Gin convinces him that her insurance agency job is the real cover and that she has planned an even bigger heist in Kuala Lumpur: $8 billion from the "International Clearance Bank" (which refers to the Bank of International Settlements in Malaysia) in the North Tower of the Petronas Towers. During their set-up, Cruz and his team (with the guidance of the stealthy Thibadeaux) track down Gin and confirm that she is still on mission to bring in Mac. Despite the presence of Cruz and other security watching the building, the theft takes place in the final seconds of the new 2000 millennium countdown. Gin pulls the plug on her laptop prematurely and sets off alarms. They narrowly escape the computer vault and are forced to cross the lights hung from the bottom of the bridge linking the two towers. Following a death-defying escape when the cable breaks, Gin and Mac make their way to a ventilation shaft, where Mac explains "Plan B". Using mini-parachutes, they were going to escape down the shaft. Gin has lost her parachute earlier in the escape, so Mac gives her his. He tells her to meet him the next morning at the Pudu train station. Gin arrives at the station waiting for Mac. He shows up late with Aaron Thibadeaux, who reveals himself with fellow FBI agents. He explains that Cruz is here and that the FBI has been looking for her for some time. Two years earlier, when Agent Thibadeaux caught and arrested him, Mac made a deal to help the FBI arrest Gin, as she was the primary target all along. However, the aging thief has another plan: to help her escape. Mac slips Gin a gun and quietly explains that he returned only seven of the eight billion dollars they had stolen electronically in the heist. Gin then pretends to hold Mac hostage at gunpoint, threatening to shoot him if the agents follow her. She boards a train and the FBI heads to the next station. Gin jumps trains mid-station and arrives back at Pudu. She tells Mac that she needs him for another job and they both board a train. The Petronas Twin Towers, where the final heist takes place 

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Robin Hood protects Maid Marian and fends off a villain played by John Dearth. (The series was not filmed in colour.) The series is set in the 12th century, during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart. Robin, Earl of Locksley, a Saxon nobleman, returns from the Crusades to find a Norman lord living in his ancestral home, Locksley Hall. He is forced to go to the Sheriff of Nottingham, who represents the law, seeking to reclaim his land. But the Sheriff, another Norman, sides with the usurper. Robin is tricked into signing a document fatal to his claim, but when the plot to then murder him goes wrong Robin ends up as a hunted man. In the forest he meets a peasant (Alfie Bass), who is due to have his hands mutilated for killing his lord's deer, but Robin rescues him. The hunter tells him of outlaws living free in the forest. When they meet the outlaws, Robin drops his title and asks to just be called Robin. As he is hooded, they call him Robin of the Hood. He is thus forced into the life of an outlaw, dwelling in Sherwood Forest with a band of men who right the wrongs committed by the rich and powerful Normans against the poor and defenceless Saxons. He is given the name Robin Hood by the outlaw band's original leader, Will Scatlock, who is fatally wounded in the second episode. Robin Hood's enemy in the series is the Sheriff of Nottingham who, with his cohorts, adherents of the tyrant, Prince John, schemes to capture the outlaw by any means possible. Lady Marian Fitzwalter (Maid Marian), a young noblewoman and Robin Hood's lover, keeps him informed of the Sheriff's whereabouts and intentions. Episodes are punctuated with manly deeds of derring-do, tense escapes and pursuits, princely tournaments, the thundering hoof-beats of powerful steeds, the clattering of flashing swords, and the whizzing of fatally placed arrows. In "A Year and A Day" (series 2), a refugee peasant explains that, under English law, a peasant who escapes serfdom and lives in a city for "a year and a day" is a free man, provided the man lives openly, not in hiding. When Robin Hood helps the peasant move about the city, the Sheriff invokes "the law of hue-and-cry", explaining that any man within hearing must drop his chores and help apprehend the felon. In "A Christmas Goose" (series 3), a boy's goose nips a lord's horse so the lord is thrown. The lord condemns the goose to death – for his Christmas dinner. But Robin Hood counters that under English common law, an accused animal is entitled to a fair trial, the same as a human. While Robin Hood drags out the trial, Friar Tuck gets the cook drunk and switches geese. When the deception is revealed, the lord relents and pardons the goose. Two episodes, "Brother Battle" (#84) and "To Be a Student" (#90) emphasized the Catholic Church's struggle to educate commoners, and even the children of the Saxon serfs, despite laws forbidding the practice and in the face of opposition from the Norman nobility. The writers created supporting characters who were likeable and occasionally resourceful. In "The Goldmaker's Return" (series 2), Robin Hood is away in France on a mission. Lady Marian, Little John and the other Merry Men carry the day without the star of the show ever showing his face. Most of the time, however, Robin is required to save the day single-handed, following the usual comment that "sending many men would be noticed, only one man going in alone will be overlooked", etc. Despite the simplistic plotting required by the 26-minute format, the writing was both professional in its handling of situations, and pointed in its dialogue. Anachronisms abounded: the lipsticked girl with modern hairdo in the "Friar Tuck" episode, for instance; wine cups for each occupant at a table in "Checkmate", when that only became the practice hundreds of years later; the 20th century school implements in "Brother Battle"; the use of Guineas from the 1700's as coinage; written tavern signs when most people were illiterate; and a "bard" in "The Challenge" episode who sings a song to the late 17th-century tune of "Lillibullero" in 12th-century England. All this is typical of every series of historical fiction, but the show's producers pointed with pride to their accuracy, courtesy of hired consultants. There was an element of self-parody at times, that sat uneasily on the series. For instance, in one episode, "The Challenge", the plot (as such) finished halfway through the show, and the remainder became a comedy as the hapless Richard of the Lea and his wife worried whilst their larder and wine cellar were emptied, during a siege, by Robin, Little John, and Tuck eating and dancing all the day and night. 

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An absent-minded Professor Downie (Forrester Harvey) makes a call upon Capt. Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (John Howard) as he is making plans for his much-delayed wedding to fiancee Phyllis Claverling (Heather Angel) in his ancestral home Temple Tower. The professor informs Drummond that a fortune was buried in one of the walled off storerooms underneath his estate, and that Downie was in possession of a book written in code that would lead them to discover the treasure. Unfortunately for the professor, someone else also wanted the riches and Drummond once again is dragged into the plot as the code book is stolen, Professor Downie is murdered, and Phyllis is kidnapped. 

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18-year-old Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) receives a threatening phone call while home alone. Drew is chased outside by somebody dressed as Ghostface, who stabs her in the breast, removing one of her silicone implants. A vehicle driven by her father—who is distracted by getting a blowjob from his wife—hits her and she is murdered by Ghostface. Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) meets up with her boyfriend Bobby (Jon Abrahams) and her friends, Brenda (Regina Hall), Ray (Shawn Wayans), Greg (Lochlyn Munro) and Buffy (Shannon Elizabeth). Various news teams, including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri), converge on the school in the wake of Drew's murder. Gail hooks up with Buffy's intellectually disabled brother Special Officer Doofy (Dave Sheridan), hoping to milk the facts out of him. While Cindy is in class, she receives an ominous note and realizes Drew was murdered exactly one year after she and her friends accidentally killed a man. At a beauty pageant that evening, Greg is killed by the killer in plain view while the audience mistakes Buffy's pleas for help as being part of her act of dramatic reading but Buffy wins the pageant, forgetting about Greg. After Cindy goes home alone, the killer attacks her but retreats when Cindy contacts the police. Bobby arrives and is arrested after a knife and cellphone fall out of his pocket. As Cindy spends the night at Buffy and Doofy's place, she receives a mocking call from the killer. The following day, Bobby is released from jail. Buffy is beheaded by the killer with a cleaver, though her severed head keeps talking and is eventually thrown out. That night, Ray and Brenda go to the movie theater to see Shakespeare in Love, where Ray is stabbed in the ear in a bathroom stall. The killer goes after Brenda but angry movie patrons, who are fed up with Brenda's rude and obnoxious behavior, kill her by stabbing before the killer can. Cindy throws a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. During the party, Bobby and Cindy go upstairs and have sex. Suddenly, the killer appears and stabs Bobby before disappearing. Cindy gets a gun from a drawer and Bobby follows. When Brenda's stoner brother Shorty (Marlon Wayans) comes up from the basement, Bobby takes the gun and shoots him. Ray arrives on the scene, still alive. Bobby and Ray confront Cindy in the kitchen and announce their intention to kill her and her father (Rick Ducommun), and that they are merely copying a real killer. Bobby admits being gay, while Ray denies being so. The plan backfires when Ray viciously stabs Bobby numerous times, angry because his favorite show, The Wayans Bros., has been canceled. The killer abruptly arrives and stabs Ray. He and Cindy fight, with Cindy employing moves copied from The Matrix and kicking him out a window. However, the killer vanishes before the police arrive. At the police station, Cindy and the sheriff (Kurt Fuller) realize that Doofy is the killer and was faking his disability. Doofy has already escaped with Gail Hailstorm. Upon finding his discarded Ghostface mask in the street, Cindy begins screaming but is hit by a car, as the sheriff walks away. In a mid- credits scene, Shorty is presumably giving advice on how to survive a horror movie but it is actually advice on how to successfully enact a Snatch-and- Grab. 

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In this painting, The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle, Hester Prynne and Pearl are in the foreground and Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth are in the background (painting by Hugues Merle, 1861). In Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a baby of unknown parentage. She is required to wear a scarlet "A" on her dress at all times, including when she is around the townspeople to shame her. The letter "A" stands for adulteress, although this is never explicitly stated in the novel. Her sentence required her to stand on the scaffold for three hours, exposed to public humiliation, and to wear the scarlet "A" for the rest of her life. As Hester approaches the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd are angered by her beauty and quiet dignity. When demanded and cajoled to name the father of her child, Hester refuses. As Hester looks out over the crowd, she notices a small, misshapen man and recognizes him as her long-lost husband, who has been presumed lost at sea. When the husband sees Hester's shame, he asks a man in the crowd about her and is told the story of his wife's adultery. He angrily exclaims that the child's father, the partner in the adulterous act, should also be punished and vows to find the man. He chooses a new name, Roger Chillingworth, to aid him in his plan. The Reverend John Wilson and the minister of Hester's church, Arthur Dimmesdale, question her, but she refuses to name her lover. After she returns to her prison cell, the jailer brings in Chillingworth, now a physician, to calm Hester and her child with his roots and herbs. He and Hester have an open conversation regarding their marriage and the fact that they were both in the wrong. Her lover, however, is another matter and he demands to know who it is; Hester refuses to divulge such information. He accepts this, stating that he will find out anyway, and forces her to conceal that he is her husband. If she ever reveals him, he warns her, he will destroy the child's father. Hester agrees to Chillingworth's terms although she suspects she will regret it. Following her release from prison, Hester settles in a cottage at the edge of town and earns a meager living with her needlework, which is of extraordinary quality. She lives a quiet, somber life with her daughter, Pearl, and performs acts of charity for the poor. She is troubled by her daughter's unusual fascination with the scarlet "A". The shunning of Hester also extends to Pearl, who has no playmates or friends except her mother. As she grows older, Pearl becomes capricious and unruly. Her conduct starts rumors, and, not surprisingly, the church members suggest Pearl be taken away from Hester. Hester, hearing rumors that she may lose Pearl, goes to speak to Governor Bellingham. With him are ministers Wilson and Dimmesdale. Hester appeals to Dimmesdale in desperation, and the minister persuades the governor to let Pearl remain in Hester's care. Because Dimmesdale's health has begun to fail, the townspeople are happy to have Chillingworth, the newly arrived physician, take up lodgings with their beloved minister. Being in such close contact with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth begins to suspect that the minister's illness is the result of some unconfessed guilt. He applies psychological pressure to the minister because he suspects Dimmesdale is Pearl's father. One evening, pulling the sleeping Dimmesdale's vestment aside, Chillingworth sees a symbol that represents his shame on the minister's pale chest. Tormented by his guilty conscience, Dimmesdale goes to the square where Hester was punished years earlier. Climbing the scaffold in the dead of night, he admits his guilt but cannot find the courage to do so publicly in the light of day. Hester, shocked by Dimmesdale's deterioration, decides to obtain a release from her vow of silence to her husband. Several days later, Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest and tells him of her husband and his desire for revenge. She convinces Dimmesdale to leave Boston in secret on a ship to Europe where they can start life anew. Inspired by this plan, the minister seems to gain new energy. On Election Day, Dimmesdale gives one of his most inspired sermons. But as the procession leaves the church, Dimmesdale climbs upon the scaffold and confesses his sin, dying in Hester's arms. Later, most witnesses swear that they saw a stigma in the form of a scarlet "A" upon his chest, although some deny this statement. Chillingworth, losing his will for revenge, dies shortly thereafter and leaves Pearl a substantial inheritance. After several years, Hester returns to her cottage and resumes wearing the scarlet letter. When she dies, she is buried near the grave of Dimmesdale, and they share a simple slate tombstone engraved with an escutcheon described as: "On a field, sable, the letter A, gules" ("A red letter A written on a black background"). 

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Max and Page Conners (Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt) are a mother-daughter con artist team. When the film opens, the Conners are finishing a con on Dean Cumanno (Ray Liotta), an auto-body shop owner and small-time crook. The con, which the Conners have played many times before on other men, involves Max marrying Dean, passing out on their wedding night to avoid consummating the marriage, and then Page (posing as Dean's secretary) luring Dean into a compromising position to justify Max's immediate divorce and hefty settlement. The con is a success. Page declares that she wants to go solo. Max initially relents, but when they go to the bank to split their earnings, they're confronted by an IRS agent (Anne Bancroft) who declares that they owe the government a considerable sum on top of the rest of their savings, which have already been seized. Page reluctantly agrees to work one last con with Max in Palm Beach, to get enough money to pay off the IRS and set Page up to work on her own. For their target, they choose widower William B. Tensy (Gene Hackman), a tobacco baron who is addicted to his own product. While working the main con with Tensy, Page attempts a side con without her mother's knowledge. Page targets beachfront bartender Jack (Jason Lee), who is worth $3 million; she tells him that her name is Jane, but develops genuine feelings for him. Max learns of the side con and tells Page to break the relationship off, which Page does reluctantly. Tensy proposes to Max ahead of schedule, but before they can get married, he accidentally chokes and dies while trying to initiate sex with Max. While Max and Page are deciding what to do with the body, Dean arrives, having tracked Max down to apologize and propose to her again. Dean figures out that Max and Page conned him, and threatens to call the authorities. Max offers to return Dean's divorce settlement money if he'll help them make Tensy's death look like an accident. Max tells Page that their money wasn't really taken by the IRS; the agent was Max's mentor, Barbara, who agreed to help prevent Page from leaving. However, when Max, Page and Dean go to the bank, the money really has gone, having been liquidated in an act of betrayal by Barbara. In order to help Max, Page returns to Jack and accepts his proposal, planning to work it as a regular con. Page insists that Jack will not cheat on her, but is heartbroken when, on their wedding night, she breaks into her mother's room and finds him in a compromising position with Max. After the divorce settlement is paid, Dean confronts Max about the ethics of their con, pointing out that even a "goody-goody" like Jack is only human. Max reveals that Jack actually turned her down and that she had to drug him, but she defends her actions by saying that Jack would hurt Page eventually. Dean counters that Max has no right to keep Page from the man she loves because of what "might" happen. Chastened, Max tells Page the truth, admitting that her efforts to protect her daughter have only hurt her in other ways. Page returns to Jack, giving him back the bar he'd had to sell to pay the settlement, and tells him her real name. Max and Dean also get together, Dean having admitted that he still loves Max despite what she put him through. The final shot of the film is of Dean -- using the name 'Stanley' -- romancing Barbara, with Max watching them via binoculars, implying that Max and Dean are now working together to get Max's money back from Barbara. 

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During the days of Emperor Augustus and King Herod the Great, Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel who tells her that she will give birth to Jesus, the Son of God. Later, Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who tells her that she is the most blessed of women and that her child is blessed. When the Romans hold a census, Mary travels with her husband Joseph to his hometown of Bethlehem to register. There, Jesus is born in a manger. A week later, Mary and Joseph travel to Jerusalem to present Jesus at the Temple. There, they are greeted by Simeon, who blesses Jesus as the Christ. At the age of twelve, Jesus becomes separated from his parents during a Passover trip to Jerusalem. When Mary asks about his whereabouts, Jesus tells them that he was in His Father's house. Years later, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius and King Herod Antipas, John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus. Jesus is subsequently tempted in the wilderness by Satan but withstands the Devil's trials. Travelling to Capernaum, Jesus recruits the disciples Peter, James, and John after helping them to find a large haul of fish. During his preaching ministry, Jesus resurrects the daughter of Jairus. Jesus then recruits twelve apostles from among His disciples including Matthew and Judas Iscariot. Jesus' followers also include several women including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna. The film covers several of Jesus' teachings and messages including the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule, loving your enemy, and the Parable of the Sower. While visiting the home of the Pharisee Simon, a sinful woman anoints Jesus' feet, prompting Jesus to forgive her sins. Jesus and his disciples later travel across the Sea of Galilee where he calms the storm. At Gerasa, Jesus exorcises a demon-possessed man and the demons enter a herd of swine. At Bethsaida, Jesus feeds five thousand with five loaves and two pieces of fish. Later, Jesus and his disciples travel up a mountain where Jesus encounters the prophets Moses and Elijah and is transfigured. As Jesus' preaching and healing ministry grows, he reaches out to the sinners and outcasts including prostitutes and tax collectors, earning the ire of the Pharisees and religious teachers. Jesus also befriends the tax collector Zaccheus, convincing him to repay people he has extorted. While preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus befriends a little girl and tells his disciples not to forbid the little children from coming to Him. Jesus draws the attention of the Pharisees, Jewish religious leaders, and Romans after he drives the merchants out of the Temple. In Jerusalem, Jesus teaches the Parable of the Tenants and to pay taxes to Caesar. At the Last Supper, Jesus warns his disciples of his impending betrayal and death. Judas conspires with the religious leaders to betray Jesus. At the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is betrayed by Judas and captured by the Jewish authorities. Peter denies knowing Jesus three times before the cock crows. The following day, Jesus is condemned by the religious leaders. He is then brought before by Pontius Pilate, who sends him to Herod. While Pilate exonerates Jesus of wrongdoing, the Jesus leaders and crowd demand Jesus' death. After being scourged, Jesus is forced to carry his cross through the streets. When he collapses from exhaustion, Simon of Cyrene is obliged to carry his cross. At Golgotha, Jesus is crucified besides two robbers, one of whom recognizes him as the Messiah. Following Jesus' death at noon, the sky is plunged into darkness and the curtain of the Temple is ripped through the middle. Joseph of Arimathea buries Jesus in a tomb. Jesus rises from the dead on the third day. Before ascending back to Heaven, Jesus tells his disciples that all power and authority has been given to Him and commands them to go and make disciples of all nations. 

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During the Cold War, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force jointly developed a nuclear submarine with the United States Navy. On its maiden voyage, the captain of the submarine declares the submarine to be an independent state, "Yamato". The Captain of the Yamato is a man called Kaieda and he attempts to attend a UN summit in order to be recognized as an independent nation. However, many forces such as the United States Navy and the Soviet Navy try to stop Kaieda and his crew from reaching New York. 

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Childhood friends Arumi and Sasshi are residents of the Abenobashi commercial district in Abeno-ku, Osaka. After an accident, they find themselves transported to an alternate sword and sorcery world. Their attempt to get back to reality finds them traversing a series of nonsensical worlds built on science fiction, war, fantasy, dating sim games and American movies. Each alternate Abenobashi is a surreal manifestation of Sasshi's otaku interests, populated by analogs of the protagonist's relatives and acquaintances and a blue-haired stranger known as Eutus. Their quest to return home is at core a bildungsroman because the Abenobashi dimensions are mostly hobby worlds of increasing sophistication. Sasshi does not want to go home, and in fact is the sole force that is propelling them between worlds. While chasing a cat in the first episode, Arumi's grandfather fell off a roof and was hospitalized. With this new trauma pressuring him in addition to his apprehension about the eventual destruction of the shopping arcade and the Asahina's moving away, Sasshi was no longer willing or able to cope with reality, and unbeknownst to even himself, he had caused their dimension to rewrite itself into worlds echoing his escapist obsessions. 

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Azumanga Daioh chronicles the everyday life in an unnamed Japanese high school of six girls and two of their teachers: child prodigy Chiyo Mihama and her struggle to fit in with girls five years older; reserved Sakaki and her obsession with the cute animals while certain ones seem to hate her; spacey Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga with a skewed perspective on the world; Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara's aggravation at an annoying best friend; Tomo Takino, whose energy is rivaled only by her lack of sense; sporty Kagura and her one-sided athletics rivalry with Sakaki; their homeroom teacher Yukari Tanizaki; and her friend, physical education teacher Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa. Secondary characters include Kimura-sensei, a creepy male teacher with an obsession with teenage girls, and Kaorin, a female classmate with a crush on Sakaki. The story covers three years of tests, talking between classes, culture festivals, and athletic events at school, as well as time spent traveling to and from school, studying at Chiyo's house, and vacations at Chiyo's summer beach home and the fictional theme park Magical Land, concluding with the graduation of the main cast. It is generally realistic in tone, marked by occasional bursts of surrealism and absurdity, such as Osaka imagining Chiyo's ponytails being "unscrewed" from her head and an episode featuring the characters' New Year's dreams. 

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Convenience store robber Herbert I. "Hi" McDunnough and police officer Edwina "Ed" meet after she takes the mugshots of the recidivist. During subsequent visits, Hi learns that Ed's fiancé has left her. Hi proposes to her after his latest release from prison, and the two get married. They move into a desert mobile home, and Hi gets a job in a machine shop. They want to have children but Ed is infertile, and they cannot adopt because of Hi's criminal record, even though Ed is a police officer. Devastated, Ed quits her job. The couple learns of the "Arizona Quints", quintuplet sons of locally famous furniture magnate Nathan Arizona; driven by envy, Hi and Ed kidnap one of the babies, whom they believe to be Nathan Junior. Hi and Ed return home and are soon visited by Hi's cellmates, Gale and Evelle Snoats, who have just escaped from prison. Facing ridicule by the Snoats brothers for his new domestic life, Hi is tempted to return to his felonious ways. That evening, Hi has an intense nightmare in which he foresees the arrival of an apocalyptic biker, later revealed to be bounty hunter Leonard Smalls. The next day, Hi and Ed are visited by Hi's foreman Glen and his family. Glen's wife Dot speaks of her desire to have more children with Glen, while Glen confesses to Hi that he and Dot are swingers, and he proposes exchanging wives. Hi assaults Glen in his wrath and chases him off the property. That night, Hi robs a convenience store and steals a package of diapers for Junior, but Ed, furious, ditches him, forcing Hi to escape on foot from the police, two armed cashiers, and a pack of dogs. Glen returns the next day to fire Hi, and reveals that he has inferred Junior's identity because of the newspaper article he read about Junior missing. He threatens to turn Hi in to the police unless Glen and Dot get custody of Junior. Gale and Evelle overhear this conversation and overpower Hi in a wild fight in his home, tying him to a chair and taking Junior for themselves. When Ed comes home, she frees Hi and the two arm themselves and set out together to retrieve the child. Meanwhile, the bounty hunter Leonard Smalls approaches Nathan Arizona Sr. with an offer to find the child for $50,000. Nathan Sr. declines the offer, believing that Smalls himself is the kidnapper. Smalls decides to recover the child anyway to sell on the black market. Gale and Evelle rob a bank but leave Junior there as they make their getaway. One of the bank's anti-theft dye canisters explodes in their loot sack, blocking the car's windows and incapacitating them. At the bank, Smalls arrives for Junior just ahead of Ed and Hi. Ed grabs the baby and flees; Hi is able to fend Smalls off for a while, but is eventually overwhelmed by Smalls's superior strength, armament and viciousness. As Smalls throws Hi to the ground and prepares to kill him, Hi holds up his hand to reveal that he has pulled the pin from one of the hand grenades on Smalls's vest. Smalls cannot get rid of the grenade in time and is blown to pieces when it explodes and sets off all his weapons. Hi and Ed sneak Junior back into the Arizona home and are confronted by Nathan Sr. After Nathan Sr. learns why they took his son, he sympathizes with their predicament and decides not to turn them in. When Hi and Ed say that they are splitting up, he advises them to sleep on it. Hi and Ed go to sleep in the same bed, and Hi has a dream about Gale and Evelle returning to prison, realizing they "weren't ready yet to come out into the world"; Glen gets his due from a Polish-American police officer whom he has no luck getting to listen to his "wild tales" about Hi and Ed after he "threw in one Polack joke too many"; and Nathan Jr. gets a football for Christmas from "a kindly couple who wish to remain unknown", later becoming a football star. The dream ends with an elderly couple (implied to be Hi and Ed) together enjoying a holiday visit from a large family of children and grandchildren. 

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Gypsy Rose Lee narrates her way through a tale of a double murder, backstage at the "Old Opera" burlesque theatre on 42nd Street, New York City. The story depicts a world populated by strippers, comics and costume salesman, where crime is part of the norm and where women struggle to earn a living. The narrative is a "wise-cracking" and humorous tale of murder in a burlesque house, and with the unusual weapon of the title. 

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The plot concerns a feud between two affluent families, the long-established (upper class) Hillcrists, played by C.V. France, Helen Haye, and Jill Esmond, and the nouveau riche (formerly working class) Hornblowers, played by Edmund Gwenn, John Longden, and Frank Lawton. Two underlying themes in the story are class warfare and the urbanization of the countryside. The Hillcrists are upset by the actions of Mr. Hornblower, whom they consider to be ostentatious and crass, in buying up land, evicting tenant farmers, and surrounding the area with factories. The Hillcrists make every effort they can to preserve the last large piece of open land that adjoins their beautiful rural estate. After being tricked out of the land in an auction, the Hillcrists learn a dark secret about Mr. Hornblower's beautiful daughter-in-law Chloe (played by Phyllis Konstam). It turns out that she had previously earned a living by playing the professional "other woman" in pre-arranged divorce cases. When Mr. Hornblower learns of this secret, and that the Hillcrists have discovered it and are prepared to use it against his family, Mr. Hornblower agrees to sell the rural land to the Hillcrists for less than half the auction price, on the condition that the family swears to keep the information secret. However, the news starts to leak out, precipitating a crisis in the family. Chloe Hornblower goes to the Hillcrists, begging them to help keep the secret from her husband, who is aware that something is going on. She hides behind a curtain when her husband unexpectedly storms into the Hillcrist home, demanding to know the secret. Keeping his promise to Chloe, Mr. Hillcrist makes up a story, but the young Mr. Hornblower is not convinced, and declares that he intends to end his marriage, even though Chloe is pregnant with his child. Upon hearing this, Chloe runs to the lily pond outside the Hillcrist home and drowns herself. When her body is discovered, the elder Hornblower concedes that Hillcrist has destroyed him and his family completely; he says if he can, he will harm Hillcrist or one of Hillcrist's family. Hillcrist makes a sincere apology but Hornblower calls him a hypocrite. 

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Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay (Coleen Gray). He plans to steal $2 million from the money-counting room of a racetrack during a featured race. He assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop (Ted de Corsia), a betting window teller (Elisha Cook Jr.) to gain access to the backroom, a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey) to shoot the favorite horse during the race to distract the crowd, a wrestler (Kola Kwariani) to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and a track bartender (Joe Sawyer). George Peatty, the teller, tells his wife Sherry (Marie Windsor) about the impending robbery. Sherry is bitter at George for not delivering on the promises of wealth he once made her, so George hopes telling her about the robbery will placate and impress her. Sherry does not believe him at first but, after learning that the robbery is real, enlists her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) to steal the money from George and his associates. The heist is successful, although the sharpshooter is shot and killed by a security guard after he runs over a horseshoe that had been offered to him for good luck but was thrown to the ground and has a flat tire on his car. The conspirators gather at the apartment where they are to meet Johnny and divide the money. Before Johnny arrives, Val appears with an associate and holds them up. A shootout ensues and a badly wounded George emerges as the only man standing. He goes home and shoots Sherry before collapsing. Johnny, on his way to the apartment, sees George staggering in the street and knows that something is wrong. He buys the biggest suitcase he can find to put the money in (and struggles to lock it properly). At the airport Johnny and Fay are not allowed to take the case on their flight due to its size. Instead, they must check it as regular luggage. Johnny reluctantly complies. While waiting to board the plane the couple watch the suitcase fall off a baggage cart onto the runway after a dog runs out on the runway and the baggage cart driver swerves to avoid it, break open, and the loose banknotes scattered and then swept away by the backdraft from the aircraft's propellers. Fay and Johnny try to leave the airport immediately, but they are unable to hail a cab before officers are alerted to them. Fay urges Johnny to flee; however, he refuses, calmly accepting the futility of trying to escape, and utters the final line, "What's the difference?" The film ends with two officers approaching to arrest him. 

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The "Leopard Man", a saddened leopard trainer who bore visible scars on his arms and whose personality diametrically opposed his daring profession, tells a tale of a "lion-tamer who was hated by another man" to the narrator. The unnamed man, who hated the lion-tamer, attended every performance in hopes of watching the lion crunch down on his tamer during his "big play", sticking his head in the lion's mouth. Finally, one day he witnessed it. After pointing out the patience of such a task, the Leopard Man jumped to a story about De Ville, a small "sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman" known for his quick temper. De Ville struck fear in all but one, 'King' Wallace, a lion-tamer known for sticking his head in the lion's mouth. One day, De Ville caught Wallace looking at Madame de Ville, his wife. Despite warnings about De Ville's temperament, Wallace, while feeling belligerent one day, pushed De Ville's head into a paste bucket. Calm, De Ville cleaned himself off and nothing transpired between the two for several months. At a San Francisco show, the Leopard Man, looking for his pocket-knife, oversaw Wallace and the rest of the tent occupiers, except for De Ville who glared with hatred at Wallace, watching a quarrel between some trapeze artists. Still watching the events, the Leopard Man noticed De Ville, with his handkerchief drawn, walk past Wallace and feign wiping sweat off his face. During his performance, Wallace cracked his whip and put his head inside the mouth of Augustus, his preferred lion. With Wallace's head in his mouth, Augustus' jaws clamped together. After the event, the Leopard Man went over to smell Wallace's head and sneezed. De Ville had placed snuff in his hair; Augustus had sneezed. 

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The chickens live in a farm run by the Tweedys. They try to escape, but are always caught. Frustrated at the minuscule and declining profits that the farm generates, Mrs. Tweedy conceives an idea of converting the farm to automated production and having a pie machine in the barn in order to turn the chickens into meat pies. One day, Ginger, the leader of the chickens, observes an American rooster named Rocky Rhodes crash-landing into the farm after being shot from a circus cannon. Ginger and the chickens hide him from the Tweedys. Ginger, interested in Rocky's flying abilities, begs him to help teach her and the chickens to fly. Rocky gives them training lessons in the meantime while Mr. Tweedy builds the pie machine. Later, Rocky holds a party and Ginger insists he show them to fly the next day, but Mr. Tweedy finishes making the pie machine and puts Ginger in it for a test run. Rocky saves Ginger, giving them time to warn the others of the Tweedys' plan to make them into pies and only a short time for their escape. The next day, Ginger finds Rocky has fled, leaving behind part of a poster that shows him to be a stunt rooster, shot out of a cannon from a circus and unable to fly himself, depressing Ginger and the others. Fowler the rooster tries to cheer them up by telling stories of being an RAF (Royal Air Force) division mascot, leading Ginger the idea of creating a plane to flee from the farm. The chickens assemble parts for the plane as Mrs. Tweedy insists Mr. Tweedy gather all the chickens to put into the machine, but when he comes in, the chickens attack Mr. Tweedy, leaving him bound and gagged, as they finish the plane. Rocky returns and joins them, but while taking off, Mrs. Tweedy chases them and climbs up a strand of lights while Ginger races to sever it, managing to cut the strand, sending Mrs. Tweedy into the pie machine, which causes it to explode. The chickens continue their flight to freedom, and find an island where they enjoy their freedom, and Ginger and Rocky start a relationship. 

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Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) has always been obsessed with being on television, aspiring to become a world-famous broadcast journalist. She marries Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), using his family restaurant business to keep herself financially stable, and takes a job as a part-time weather girl at a local cable station, WWEN, in the hopes of climbing the network ladder. Through relentless persistence, she's eventually promoted to doing the station's evening weather report. When Larry starts asking her to give up her career to start a family and help out at the restaurant, Suzanne immediately begins plotting to get rid of him. To this end, she uses the high school subjects of the TV documentary she's been making, Teens Speak Out; she seduces one of them, Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix), and manipulates him and his friends, delinquent Russell Hines (Casey Affleck) and shy Lydia Mertz (Alison Folland), into killing Larry. With the help of Russell and Lydia, Jimmy ultimately commits the murder. Though Larry's death is ruled as the result of a botched burglary, the police stumble across a Teens Speak Out clip of Suzanne at the teens' school, hinting at a relationship between her and Jimmy. The teens are arrested and connected to the crime scene. Lydia makes a deal with the police to converse with Suzanne while wearing a wire, and Suzanne unwittingly reveals her hand in the murder. However, despite this damning evidence, Suzanne argues that the police had resorted to entrapment and is released on bail. Basking in the media spotlight, Suzanne fabricates a story about Larry being a drug addict who was murdered by Jimmy and Russell, his purported dealers. Jimmy and Russell are sentenced to life in prison. Russell gets his sentence reduced while Lydia is released on probation. Meanwhile, Larry's father, Joe (Dan Hedaya), realizes Suzanne was behind his son's death and uses his Mafia connections to have her murdered. The hitman lures Suzanne away from her home, kills her, and then places her beneath a frozen lake. Lydia gains national attention by telling her side of the story in a televised interview, becoming a celebrity. Larry's sister, Janice (Illeana Douglas), practices her figure skating on the frozen lake where Suzanne's corpse is hidden. 

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The film portrays two conflicts that take place around Flagstone, a fictional town in the American Old West: a land battle related to the construction of a railroad, and a mission of vengeance against a cold-blooded killer. A struggle exists for Sweetwater, a piece of land in the desert outside Flagstone which contains the region's only other water source. The land was bought by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who foresaw that the railroad would have to pass through that area, to provide water for the steam locomotives. When crippled railroad tycoon Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) learns of this, he sends his hired gun Frank (Henry Fonda) to intimidate McBain to move off the land, but Frank instead kills McBain and his three children, planting evidence to frame the bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards). Meanwhile, former prostitute Jill (Claudia Cardinale) arrives at Flagstone from New Orleans, revealing that she is McBain's new wife and therefore the owner of the land. The film opens with a mysterious harmonica-playing gunman (Charles Bronson), whom Cheyenne later dubs "Harmonica", shooting three men sent by Frank to kill him. In a roadhouse on the way to Sweetwater, where he also encounters Mrs. McBain, Harmonica informs Cheyenne that the three gunfighters appeared to be posing as Cheyenne's men. Cheyenne arrives at Sweetwater soon after and both men seem attracted to Mrs. McBain. Harmonica explains that, according to the contract of sale, she will lose Sweetwater unless the station is built by the time the track's construction crews reach that point, so Cheyenne puts his men to work building it. Frank turns against Morton, who wants to make a deal with Mrs. McBain, and immobilizes him under guard on his private train out in the desert. Instead, Mrs. McBain allows Frank to seduce her, seemingly to save her life, and is then forced to sell her property in an auction where Frank's men intimidate the other bidders. Harmonica disrupts Frank's plan to keep the price down when he arrives, holding Cheyenne at gunpoint, and makes a much higher bid with the reward money for the wanted Cheyenne. But as Cheyenne is placed on a train bound for the Yuma prison, two members of his gang purchase one-way tickets for the train, intending to help him escape. Morton now pays Frank's men to turn against him. However, Harmonica helps Frank kill them by directing his attention to their whereabouts from the room where Mrs. McBain is taking a bath. On Frank's return to Morton's train, he finds that Morton and his remaining men have been killed in a battle with Cheyenne's gang. Frank then goes to Sweetwater to confront Harmonica. On two occasions, Frank has asked him who he is, but both times Harmonica only answered with names of men "who were alive before they knew you". This time, Harmonica says he will reveal who he is "only at the point of dying". As the two prepare for a gun duel, Harmonica's motive is revealed in a flashback. A younger Frank forces a boy to support his older brother on his shoulders, while his brother's neck is in a noose strung from an arch. As the boy struggles to hold his brother's weight, Frank stuffs a harmonica into the panting boy's mouth. The older brother curses Frank, and the boy (who will grow up to be Harmonica) collapses to the ground. Back in the present, Harmonica draws first and shoots Frank. He then stuffs his harmonica into the dying Frank's mouth as a reminder. At the house again, Harmonica and Cheyenne say goodbye to Mrs. McBain, who is supervising the construction of the railway station as the track-laying crews reach Sweetwater. As the two men ride off, Cheyenne falls, admitting that he was mortally wounded by Morton during the fight with Frank's gang. While Harmonica rides away with Cheyenne's dead body, the work train arrives and Mrs. McBain carries water to the rail workers. 

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Beck (Dwayne Johnson) is a "retrieval expert", a bounty hunter who collects debts for a man named Billy Walker (William Lucking). He is dispatched to a nightclub to retrieve a championship ring from a football player, and after doing so is assaulted by one of Walker's other collectors. Angry, he confronts Walker and tells him that he wants out of the business. Walker talks him into one last bounty - retrieve Walker's son Travis (Seann William Scott) from a small mining town in Brazil and Walker will give him enough money to open his own restaurant. Beck accepts and leaves for Brazil. When Beck arrives in the town of El Dorado he meets with the man running the mining operation, Cornelius Hatcher (Christopher Walken). Hatcher gives Beck his blessing to grab Travis, but reneges when he finds out that Travis has discovered a missing golden artifact called "O Gato do Diabo” (The Devil's Cat). Beck confronts Hatcher and his men in the local bar and leaves with Travis. On the way back to the airfield, Travis forces their Jeep off the road and into the jungle. There he tries to escape but is re-captured by Beck. After an unfortunate encounter with some local monkeys, the two find themselves in the camp of the local resistance movement. At the resistance encampment, Travis convinces the rebels that Beck works for Hatcher and was sent to kill them all. After a prolonged fight, Beck gains the upper hand before the rebel leader Mariana (Rosario Dawson) intervenes. She wants Travis, as the Gato can be used to ensure the locals can free themselves from Hatcher. Hatcher suddenly attacks the camp, killing many rebels. Beck, Travis, and Mariana escape the camp and Beck makes Mariana a deal: she helps him get Travis to the airfield in exchange for the Gato. After some searching, Travis leads them to a cave behind a waterfall where the Gato is located. They retrieve it and begin the journey back. On the way back, Mariana chastises Travis for wanting to sell the artifact, but Travis argues that he actually did want to give it to a museum. Mariana gives the two men Konlobos, a toxic fruit that temporarily paralyzes the eater. As she tells Beck which direction the airfield is, she leaves them with the fire to keep the animals away. After waking up able to move, Beck hauls Travis to the airfield. The local pilot, Declan (Ewen Bremner), tells Beck that Mariana was captured earlier by Hatcher and will probably be killed. Travis pleads with Beck to help, and the two head into town to rescue her. Using a cow stampede for cover, the two begin their assault on Hatcher's goons. Travis becomes trapped by gunfire in a bus, and Beck saves him before the bus explodes. Hatcher tells his brother to take Mariana and the Gato and flee, but they are stopped by Travis. Hatcher confronts Beck, who offers him the chance to leave town, which Hatcher initially refuses. After he is shot by the townspeople, Hatcher agrees to leave town, but eventually dies from his gunshot wounds. Travis gives the Gato to Mariana before leaving with Beck, who tells him that despite all they've been through he must still return Travis to the United States. Travis is delivered to his dad who begins to verbally and physically abuse him. Beck asks to celebrate with them and gives Walker and his men Konlobos. As they are paralyzed, Beck uncuffs Travis and the duo leave together, with Travis continuing to jokingly annoy Beck. 

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In 1916 Saint Petersburg, Russia, at a ball celebrating the Romanov tricentennial, Dowager Empress Marie gives a music box and a necklace inscribed with the words "Together in Paris" as parting gifts to her youngest granddaughter, 8-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia. The ball is suddenly interrupted by Grigori Rasputin, a sorcerer and the former royal adviser until he was exiled for treason. Seeking revenge, Rasputin sells his soul in exchange for an unholy reliquary, which he uses to curse the Romanovs, sparking the Russian Revolution. As revolutionaries siege the palace, Marie and Anastasia escape through a secret passageway with the aid of 10-year-old servant boy Dimitri. Rasputin confronts the two royals outside on a frozen river, only to fall through the ice and drown. The pair manage to reach a moving train, but as Marie climbs aboard, Anastasia falls and hits her head on the platform, subsequently suffering amnesia. Ten years later, in 1926 Russia is under communist rule and Marie has publicly offered 10 million rubles for the safe return of her granddaughter. 20-year-old conman Dimitri and his friend/partner-in-crime, Vlad, search for an Anastasia look-alike to bring to Paris so they can collect the reward. Elsewhere, an 18-year-old Anastasia (now called "Anya") leaves the rural orphanage where she grew up. Accompanied by a stray puppy she names Pooka, she decides to head to Paris, inspired by the inscription on her necklace, but finds she is unable to leave Russia without an exit visa. An old woman advises her to see Dimitri at the abandoned palace; there, the two men are impressed by Anya's resemblance to the "real" Anastasia, and decide to take her with them to Paris. Rasputin's albino bat minion, Bartok, is nearby and notices his master's dormant reliquary suddenly revived by Anya's presence; it drags him to limbo, where he finds Rasputin has survived. Enraged to hear that Anastasia escaped the curse, Rasputin sends his demonic minions from the reliquary to kill her, who sabotage the trio's train by overheating and separating the train engine and baggage car from the rest of the train as they leave St. Petersburg, and later try to lure Anya into sleepwalking off their ship to France. The trio unwittingly foil both attempts, forcing Rasputin and Bartok to travel back to the surface to kill Anya personally. During their journey, as Dimitri and Vlad teach Anya court etiquette and her family's history, Dimitri and Anya begin to fall in love. The trio eventually reach Paris and go to see Marie, who has given up the search after meeting numerous impostors. Despite this, Marie's cousin Sophie quizzes Anya to confirm her identity. Though Anya offers every answer taught to her, Dimitri finally realizes she is the real Anastasia when she (without being taught) vaguely recalls how he helped her escape the palace siege. Sophie, also convinced, arranges a meeting with Marie at the Paris Opera House. There, Dimitri tries to establish an introduction but Marie refuses, having already heard of Dimitri's initial scheme to con her. Anya overhears the conversation and angrily leaves. Dimitri later abducts Marie in her car to force her to see Anya, finally convincing her when he presents the music box Anastasia dropped during their escape. As Marie and Anya converse, Anya regains her memories, and the two sing the lullaby the music box plays. Marie recognizes Anya as Anastasia, and the two are joyfully reunited. Marie offers Dimitri the reward money the next day, recognizing him as the servant boy who saved them, but to her surprise he refuses it and leaves for Russia. At Anastasia's return celebration, Marie informs her of Dimitri's gesture, leaving Anastasia torn between staying or going with him. Pooka suddenly runs off; Anastasia chases him to the Pont Alexandre III, where she is trapped and attacked by Rasputin. Dimitri returns to save her, but is soon injured and knocked unconscious. In the struggle, Anastasia manages to get hold of Rasputin's reliquary and crushes it under her foot, avenging her family as Rasputin disintegrates and dies. In the aftermath, Anastasia and Dimitri reconcile; they elope, and Anastasia sends a farewell letter to Marie and Sophie, promising to return one day. Bartok shares a kiss with a female bat before bidding the audience farewell. 

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Below is a synopsis based on the original 1892 libretto by Marius Petipa. The story varies from production to production, though most follow the basic outline. The names of the characters also vary. In the original Hoffmann story, the young heroine is called Marie Stahlbaum and Clara (Klärchen) is her doll's name. In the adaptation by Dumas on which Petipa based his libretto, her name is Marie Silberhaus. In still other productions, such as Baryshnikov's, Clara is Clara Stahlbaum rather than Clara Silberhaus. 

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In 1954, each boy in a group of Florida high school students plans to lose his virginity. They go to Porky's, a nightclub in the Everglades, believing that they can hire a prostitute to satisfy their sexual desires. The bordello's proprietor, Porky, takes their money but humiliates the boys by dumping them into the swamp. When the group demands their money back, the sheriff, Porky's brother, drives them away but not before he extorts them for the rest of their money, further embarrassing them. After Mickey, who returned to Porky's for revenge, is beaten so badly he has to be hospitalized, the gang becomes hellbent on exacting revenge on Porky and his brother, eventually sinking Porky's establishment into the swamp. Porky and his men, joined by the sheriff, chase the group, but the boys make it across the county line, out of Porky's brother's jurisdiction, where local police officers and the high school band meet them. One of the officers, Mickey's older brother, Ted, repeatedly damages Porky's car, promising to drop all charges against Porky for driving an unsafe vehicle if the night's events are forgiven. Because the boys are too young to have been allowed into Porky's legally, Porky and his brother agree. In a subplot, the boys peep on co-ed students in girl's locker room shower, and Tommy, Billy, and Pee Wee see several girls showering. Pee Wee gives them away when he shouts at a heavier girl, who has been blocking his view, to move so that he can see. While a few girls run out, most stay, finding the situation funny. To test their attitude, Tommy sticks his tongue out through his peephole, but gets it smeared with soap. Infuriated, he drops his pants and sticks his penis through the opening just before female coach Beulah Balbricker, who has a running feud with Tommy, walks into the shower area. Spotting the protruding member, she sneaks up on Tommy, grabs his penis and pulls with all her might. Tommy pulls free and escapes, but Beulah is determined to prove that the offending member, which has a mole on it, belongs to Tommy, going so far as to request that Principal Carter hold a police-type line-up of the boys in the nude so she can identify it. However, Carter balks at her request. As the other basketball coaches laugh, Coach Brackett suggests asking the police to send a sketch artist and hang wanted posters around the school. When that suggestion gets even Carter laughing, Balbricker leaves in a huff. She sneaks out of the bushes to ambush Tommy and actually drags his pants down, but she is pulled off him by police and dragged away screaming that she saw "it" and that she can identify its owner. Tommy breaks the fourth wall, saying, "Jeez!" to the camera. 

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Freddie (Cameron Diaz) is a former stripper marrying Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio) to repay a debt owed to nightclub owner Red (Delroy Lindo). When Freddie meets Jjaks (Keanu Reeves), Sam's brother, they instantly fall in love. Jjaks and Freddie decide to run off together, eventually staying in a motel. After realizing that they do not have any money, Freddie and Jjaks decide to go back and steal some of Sam's money. Sam catches Jjaks in the act and they have a fight. After escaping, Jjaks returns to the motel, unaware that Sam has been following him. After Jjaks passes out due to the fight, Sam ends up shooting Freddie in the stomach in Jjak's car, and tries to frame the killing on Jjaks by returning Freddie's body to the motel room along with the murder weapon. The next morning, Jjaks awakens having no memory of anything that happened after his fight with Sam. Seeing Freddie's body in the room along with the gun, he briefly thinks that maybe he killed Freddie. After being tipped off by Sam, the police arrive but Jjaks hastily avoids being caught. He drives Freddie's body to a remote area in the woods to lay her to rest. All the while, Sam has been watching these events from afar, hoping to see his brother arrested. Sam now calls a friend, Detective Ben Costikyan (Dan Aykroyd), who promptly arrests Jjaks. The three of them, along with Ben's partner Lloyd (David Alan Smith), drive to the area where supposedly Freddie's body is. However upon arrival Freddie is nowhere to be found. Angered at Sam for wasting his time, Costikyan, along with Lloyd, drive off, leaving the brothers by the side of the road. Jjaks and Sam return home. They receive a phone call from the manager of the motel (Michael Rispoli), who, based on seeing Sam carrying Freddie's body INTO the motel room and Jjaks carrying the body OUT OF the motel room, wants $50,000 to keep quiet. Jjaks now realizes that Sam was setting him up for Freddie's murder. After another fight, they come up with a plan: Jjaks will go to the motel to talk to the manager while Sam will see Red, hoping for a loan. At this point, Red has learned that Sam's been stealing money from him for the past year. Sam ends up shooting and killing Red after a brief skirmish and collects the $50,000 from a safe. Jjaks meets with the motel manager but sees Freddie's necklace on the floor of the manager's apartment. Confused and angry, Jjaks throws the manager outside and threatens to kill him. Suddenly out of nowhere, an alive Freddie walks towards them, calling out Jjaks' name. Jjaks faints. When he revives, she shows Jjaks her bullet wound and tells him that Sam's a bad shot. Also, someone picked her up from the side of the road where he had left her body. The next morning Sam calls Jjaks and tells him he got the money. However, after seeing Freddie alive from a nearby diner, he confronts Jjaks and Freddie in the manager's apartment. Sam ends up getting shot when Jjaks and Freddie try to defend themselves. Costikyan enters the hotel room and suffocates Sam by holding his hand against his mouth. It turns out that Freddie had called Costikyan after being rescued and used him to help her get the $50,000. A betrayed and wounded Jjaks is left helpless. Some time later, Costikyan is arrested in his underwear inside a hotel. Freddie had tipped off the cops and left with the money. Jjaks and Freddie have since had a falling out, however Jjaks remembers Freddie's dream: that she wants to live in Las Vegas and be a dancer. He hitchhikes there and finds her living her dream. When he finds her she says, with a smile: "what took you fucking so long?" They embrace each other. 

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In the distant future, the protagonist (Alexander Kaidanovsky) works in an unnamed location as a "Stalker" who leads people through the "Zone", an area in which the normal laws of reality do not apply and remnants of seemingly extraterrestrial activity lie undisturbed among its ruins. The Zone contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside. The area containing the Zone is shrouded in secrecy, sealed off by the government and surrounded by ominous hazards. At home with his wife and daughter, the Stalker's wife (Alisa Freindlich) begs him not to go into the Zone, but he dismissively rejects her pleas. In a rundown bar, the Stalker meets his next clients for a trip into the Zone, the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko). They evade the military blockade that guards the Zone by following a train inside the gate and ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway work car. The Stalker tells his clients they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers which lie ahead and explains that the Zone must be respected and the straightest path is not always the shortest path. The Stalker tests for various "traps" by throwing metal nuts tied to strips of cloth ahead of them. He refers to a previous Stalker named "Porcupine", who had led his brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room, come into possession of a large sum of money, and shortly afterwards committed suicide. The Writer is skeptical of any real danger, but the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice. As they travel, the three men discuss their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer expresses his fear of losing his inspiration. The Professor seems less anxious, although he insists on carrying along a small backpack. The Professor admits he hopes to win a Nobel Prize for scientific analysis of the Zone. The Stalker insists he has no motive beyond the altruistic aim of aiding the desperate to their desires. After traveling through the tunnels, the three finally reach their destination: a decayed and decrepit industrial building. In a small antechamber, a phone rings. The surprised Professor decides to use the phone to telephone a colleague. As the trio approach the Room, the Professor reveals his true intentions in undertaking the journey. The Professor has brought a 20-kiloton bomb (comparable to the Nagasaki nuclear bomb) with him, and he intends to destroy the Room to prevent its use by evil men. The three men enter a physical and verbal standoff just outside the Room that leaves them exhausted. The Writer realizes that when Porcupine met his goal, despite his conscious motives, the room fulfilled Porcupine's secret desire for wealth rather than bring back his brother from death. This prompted the guilt-ridden Porcupine to commit suicide. The Writer tells them that no one in the whole world is able to know their true desires and as such it is impossible to use the Room for selfish reasons. The Professor gives up on his plan of destroying the Room. Instead, he disassembles his bomb and scatters its pieces. No one attempts to enter the Room. The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor are met back at the bar by the Stalker's wife and daughter. After returning home, the Stalker tells his wife how humanity has lost its faith and belief needed for both traversing the Zone and living a good life. As the Stalker sleeps, his wife contemplates their relationship in a monologue delivered directly to the camera. In the last scene Martyshka, the couple's deformed daughter, sits alone in the kitchen reading as a love poem by Fyodor Tyutchev is recited. She appears to use psychokinesis to push three drinking glasses across the table. A train passes by where the Stalker's family lives, and the entire apartment shakes. 

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1880s poster 

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Set in the final years of the 19th century, Mrs Craddock is about a young and attractive woman of independent means who marries beneath her. As he had written about a subject that was considered daring at the time, Maugham had some difficulty finding a publisher. Completed in 1900, the novel was eventually published in 1902 by William Heinemann, but only on the condition that the author took out passages which, according to Heinemann, might have offended the readers. A successful and popular book, Mrs Craddock was reissued in 1903 and again in 1908. In 1938 the first non-Bowdlerized version, stylistically improved by Maugham, came out. 

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In May 1997, at a star party, teenage amateur astronomer Leo Beiderman discovers an unusual object. He sends a picture to astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf, who realizes it is a comet on collision course with Earth. Wolf dies in a car crash while racing to raise the alarm. A year later, journalist Jenny Lerner investigates Secretary of the Treasury Alan Rittenhouse over his connection with "Ellie", whom she supposes to be a mistress. She is abducted by the FBI to meet President Tom Beck, who persuades her to sit on the story for 48 hours in return for a prominent role in the press conference he will arrange. She subsequently discovers that "Ellie" is actually the acronym "E.L.E.", for "extinction-level event". Two days later, Beck announces that the comet Wolf-Beiderman is headed for Earth and could cause humanity's extinction. He reveals that the United States and Russia have been constructing the "Messiah" in orbit, a spacecraft to transport a team to alter the comet's path with nuclear bombs. While rigging nuclear bombs on the comet one astronaut is blinded and another flung into space. The ship is damaged by the blast and loses contact with Earth. Beck announces the mission's failure, the bombs split the comet into a larger (Wolf) and a smaller (Beiderman) piece, both still headed for Earth. Martial law is imposed and a lottery selects 800,000 Americans to join 200,000 pre-selected individuals in underground shelters. Lerner and the Beiderman family are pre-selected, but Leo's girlfriend Sarah and her family are not. Leo marries Sarah in a vain attempt to save her family, and Sarah refuses to go to the shelter without them. A last-ditch effort to deflect the comets with ICBMs fails. Leo eschews his safety to find Sarah and takes her and her baby brother to high ground. Lerner gives up her evacuation helicopter seat to her friend Beth and her young daughter, reconciling with her estranged father on the beach. Comet Beiderman creates a megatsunami that destroys much of the East Coast of the United States. Leo, Sarah, and her baby brother survive on the Appalachian Mountains. The crew of Messiah decide to obliterate Wolf by undertaking a suicide mission. After saying goodbye to their loved ones, they fly the ship directly into a deep crevasse and use their remaining nuclear warheads to blow Wolf into smaller pieces that burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere. After the waters recede, President Beck speaks to a large crowd at the damaged United States Capitol, encouraging them to remember those lost as they begin to rebuild. 

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is a warrior who has faced the impossible since he was found beneath his hanging mother by a mercenary's wife. The mercenary, Gambino, agreed to adopt him, but after his wife's death, Gambino forced the child Guts to fight as a mercenary. After losing his leg in a battle, Gambino becomes a shadow of his cruel self, and sells Guts to a rapist for three coins. Guts flees after killing his adoptive father in self- defense, eventually growing into a young mercenary who earned a fearsome reputation while fighting. Guts eventually catches the attention of Griffith, the angelically charismatic leader of the mercenary group, . Griffith forces Guts into joining his forces upon defeating him in battle. Guts quickly rises through the ranks of the mercenary group, eventually becoming the Hawks' renowned raid leader and Griffith's deadliest subordinate. They are hired by the kingdom of Midland to help win the Hundred Year War against the Tudor empire. During this time, Guts bonds with the Band of the Hawk and learns of Griffith's mysterious pendant, the Crimson Behelit, along with Griffith's dream to rule a kingdom of his own. When the Hawks encounter a monstrous immortal being known as Nosferatu Zodd, it adds further mystery to the Behelit as Zodd spares Guts and Griffith upon seeing it, warning the former of his impending death should he be a true friend of Griffith's. In time, the Hawks play a vital role in ending Midland's Hundred Year War with the nation of Tudor, eventually becoming ordained knights by the king of Midland. Guts gradually develops a relationship with Griffith's unit commander, Casca, the Hawks' only female member. Casca and Guts are initially hostile toward one another, but eventually start to fall in love after Guts saves Casca's life and successfully fights against one hundred men by himself to save her. After having overheard Griffith say that he can only consider someone a true friend if they have their own dream, Guts tries to leave the Hawks as the war ends and Griffith defeats his political enemies. Griffith refuses to let Guts leave the Band of the Hawk, claiming that he owns him. The two duel in single combat and Guts wins in a single blow. Unable to cope with losing to Guts, Griffith ruins his fortunes when found seducing the King's daughter, Charlotte. He ends up imprisoned to be tortured endlessly while the Hawks are marked for death. During Griffith's captivity, his torturer throws his behelit away. Guts spends the next year of his life training to become a better swordsman, but is warned on his first night by a mysterious, seemingly demonic being he calls "The Skull Knight", that his actions have set forth "The Eclipse", that will happen in one year's time. After hearing of the Hawks' dire straits in a fighting tournament, he temporarily returns to the Hawks and learns of Griffith's fate and the rest of the story. He reunites and starts a romantic relationship with Casca and helps the outlawed remnants of the Hawks rescue Griffith, only to find him horribly mutilated and rendered a mute shadow of his former self. Though the group successfully escapes past the border with Griffith, it becomes clear that Griffith's injuries are too great and he would never again be able to physically move on his own or fulfill his dream of ruling a kingdom. Guts also soon plans to leave the Hawks again, bringing Casca with him, though she refuses to go, overwhelmed by guilt over Griffith's current state. Through preordained events, the despairing Griffith regains his behelit and unknowingly activates it during a solar eclipse. This transports the Hawks to another plane where they encounter archdemons collectively known as the God Hand in a ceremony known as "the Eclipse". Urged onward by the eldritch beings to become one of them to realize his dream, Griffith sacrifices his soldiers to the God Hand's "apostles"—humans like Nosferatu Zodd who have become powerful demons by sacrificing their loved ones and humanity for power—each of the Hawks are "branded" with a symbol on their body identifying them as sacrifices. While Griffith has visions from the God Hand showing him that he was always destined to come to the Eclipse, Guts and Casca desperately fight for their lives while witnessing the brutal slaughter of their comrades. Eventually all of the Band of the Hawk are slaughtered and devoured by the demons. However, with Casca being the only woman present, she is toyed with naked by the demons. Griffith finally emerges reborn as the God Hand's fifth and final member, "Femto". Griffith's first act upon his ascension is to rape Casca in front of Guts. Guts loses his right eye and cuts off his own left forearm to escape captivity in a rage-filled attempt to kill Griffith and save Casca before losing consciousness. Guts and Casca are saved from death and brought back into the physical world at the last minute through the intervention of the mysterious and powerful Skull Knight yet again. However, the damage is done, as Casca is rendered insane from her horrific experiences. Guts learns that the Brands of Sacrifice that he and Casca now bear leave him open to be preyed upon by specters and other evil supernatural creatures on a nightly basis. Casca is left in the care of the blacksmith Godo and Rickert, the only Band of the Hawk member who escaped sacrifice because he was not present at the Crimson Behelit's activation. Guts takes an enormous sword from Godo known as Dragonslayer, and a prosthetic left arm that contains a hidden cannon built by Rickert, and begins hunting down apostles in search of revenge against Griffith. During this time, Guts begins seeing an ethereal deformed infant that appears before him, what was his and Casca's unborn child tainted by Femto's rape. Two years later, Guts is joined by an elf named Puck and a young thief named Isidro. Casca eventually runs away from Rickert, sending Guts on a mad hunt to find her. Guts is later reunited with Casca as she is about to be burned as a witch in the city of St. Albion. There, along with Puck and Isidro, they encounter Farnese and Serpico of the Holy See Church's Holy Iron Chain Knights. Guts endures a nightmarish ordeal that ends in Griffith being incarnated into a new physical form being restored through a misshapen Apostle whose dream was to "hatch" a new world. This Apostle also ingested the deformed infant after stumbling upon its weakened and dying body moments before the Incarnation ceremony, resulting in Griffith's new body bearing some sort of influence of the infant. Puck suggests that Casca's mind might be restored if they take her to the Elven realm of Elfhel. Guts, desperate to save his loved one, heads there for sanctuary with the help of his new companions. They are soon joined by the witch Schierke who teaches Farnese magic and negates the effects of the brand on Guts and Casca. Griffith creates a second Band of the Hawk with Zodd and other demonic Apostles among its ranks to battle the invading Kushan army. The war between Griffith and the Kushan emperor, Ganishka, a rogue apostle, climaxes with the emperor's destruction and the overlapping of the mortal realm and the supernatural astral realm. Now unopposed, Griffith finally obtains his own kingdom by establishing his rule over Midland with the endorsement of the Pope and Princess Charlotte, creating the city of Falconia to provide the Midlanders with refuge from the ever-increasing attacks of mythical beasts, unaware that their new ruler is actually one of them. At the same time, Guts and his party take a ship toward Elfhelm. Following a dramatic battle with the Sea God, Guts's party reaches Elfhelm, on the island of Skellig. The elf ruler, Danann, helps Farnese and Schierke travel into Casca's mind and restore her to her former self. However, despite recovering her memories, Casca still has not overcome the trauma from the events of the eclipse completely, usually collapsing when she sees Guts or remembers her fallen comrades. At the same time, Farnese and Schierke begin training with the other apprentice witches and wizards living on Skellig, during which Farnese expresses an interest in the power to heal human souls, specifically Casca. At the same time, Guts encounters the Skull Knight once again who tells him that his journey is at an end. Meanwhile, Griffith is shown leading his new armies of both humans and "war demons" against an army of giants that have emerged due to the effects of Griffith's and Ganishka's war. Griffith's army scores a swift victory with Griffith delivering the final blow against the giant leader in the climax of the battle. Following this, Griffith participates in a council with the other nobles of Falconia before departing that evening for currently unknown reasons. 

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On Christmas evening in the year 1909, in a quaint Midwestern town (visually inspired by Disney's hometown Marceline, Missouri), Jim Dear gives his wife Darling a cocker spaniel puppy they named Lady. Lady enjoys a joyful life with the couple and befriends two local neighborhood dogs, a Scottish terrier named Jock, and a bloodhound named Trusty. Meanwhile, across town, a stray mutt named Tramp lives on his own, dining on scraps from Tony's Italian restaurant and protecting his fellow strays Peg (a Pekingese) and Bull (a bulldog) from the local dogcatcher. One day, Lady is upset after her owners begin treating her rather coldly. Jock and Trusty visit her and determine that their change in behavior is due to Darling expecting a baby. While Jock and Trusty try to explain what a baby is, Tramp interrupts the conversation and offers his own thoughts on the matter, making Jock and Trusty take an immediate dislike to the stray and order him out of the yard. As Tramp leaves, he reminds Lady that "when a baby moves in, a dog moves out." Eventually, the baby arrives and the couple introduces Lady to the infant, of whom Lady becomes very fond and protective. When Jim Dear and Darling leave for a vacation, they put their dog-hating Aunt Sarah in charge of the baby and the house. Aunt Sarah's two trouble-making Siamese cats, Si and Am, deliberately mess up the house, knowing Lady will get in trouble for it, and then get her in even more trouble by tricking Aunt Sarah into thinking that Lady attacked them. Aunt Sarah then takes Lady to a pet shop to get a muzzle. Terrified, Lady flees the pet shop but is pursued by a trio of stray dogs. Tramp manages to rescue her, fighting off the vicious strays. Seeing the muzzle on Lady's head, Tramp decides to take her to the local zoo, where they find a beaver who is able to remove the muzzle with his teeth. Later, Tramp shows Lady how he lives "footloose and collar-free", eventually leading into a candlelit dinner at Tony's. Lady begins to fall in love with Tramp, but she chooses to return home in order to watch over the baby. Tramp offers to escort Lady back home, but when Tramp decides to chase hens around a farmyard for fun, Lady is captured by the dog catcher and brought to the local dog pound. While at the pound, the other dogs reveal to Lady that Tramp has had multiple girlfriends in the past, and they feel it is unlikely that he will ever settle down. Lady is eventually claimed by Aunt Sarah, who chains her in the backyard as punishment for running away. Jock and Trusty visit to comfort Lady, but when Tramp arrives to apologize, Lady berates him for having other girlfriends in the past and his failure to rescue her from the pound. Tramp sadly leaves, but immediately thereafter a rat sneaks into the house. Lady sees the rat and barks frantically at it, but Aunt Sarah tells her to be quiet. Tramp hears her barking and rushes back, entering the house and cornering the rat in the nursery. Lady breaks free and rushes to the nursery, where Tramp inadvertently knocks over the baby's crib before ultimately killing the rat. The commotion alerts Aunt Sarah, who thinks they harmed the baby. She pushes Tramp in a closet and locks Lady in the basement, then calls the pound to take Tramp away. Jim Dear and Darling return home as the dog catcher departs, and when they release Lady, she leads them to the dead rat. Overhearing everything, Jock and Trusty chase after the dog catcher's wagon. The dogs are able to track down the wagon and scare the horses, causing the wagon to crash. Jim Dear arrives in a taxi with Lady, who reunites with Tramp, but Trusty is almost killed by the wagon. That Christmas, Tramp has been adopted into the family, and he and Lady have started their own family, with Lady having given birth to a litter of four puppies (three daughters who look identical to Lady and one son who looks identical to Tramp). Jock comes to see the family along with Trusty, who is recovered and merely suffered a broken leg, and are formally welcomed as guests by the humans. Thanks to the puppies, Trusty has a fresh audience for his old stories, but he has forgotten them. 

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A young mother and her two daughters travel to Marrakech, Morocco, during the 1960s. The mother, Julia, is disenchanted by the dreary conventions of English life, hence the journey. They live in a low- rent Marrakesh hotel and make a living out of making hand-sewn dolls and with some money sent by the girls' father, an artist in London. Whilst the mother explores Sufism and quests for personal fulfilment, the daughters rebel. The elder, Bea, attempting to re-create her English life, wants to get an education and insists on going to school. The younger, Lucy, dreams of trivial things, like mashed potatoes, but also yearns for a father. Her hopes settle on a most unlikely candidate. The girls match their mother with Bilal, a Moroccan con man and acrobat; the relationship turns sexual and he moves in, becoming almost a surrogate father. However, Julia's friend encourages her to travel to Algiers and study with a Sufi master at a school that advocates the "annihilation of the ego." As money vanishes, Julia's response is to claim that "God will provide," albeit in the person of Bilal. 

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In the Victorian period, Jude Fawley is a bright young lower-class man who dreams of a university education. Circumstances conspire against him, and he is forced into a job as a stonemason and an unhappy marriage to a country girl, Arabella. He remains true to his dream and, months later, after his wife's sudden departure, he heads for the city. He thinks education is available for any man who is willing to work hard. However, he is rejected by the university based primarily on his lower-class status. During this period, he encounters his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is beautiful and intelligent, and shares his disdain for convention. Whilst Jude is enraptured by Sue, and vice versa, she marries Jude's former school teacher, Phillotson, after Jude tells her he is married to Arabella. The marriage of Sue and Phillotson is not a success, as she refuses to give herself sexually or romantically to her husband. She leaves Phillotson to join Jude in what turns out to be a rough life, moving from place to place as Jude picks up occasional work as a stonemason. Jude learns that Arabella bore a son, which she named Jude ("Juey") soon after she left Jude. The boy comes to live with his father Jude, and Sue. Sue gives birth to two children. Agnostic and independent, she refuses to legalise their arrangement by marriage. Sue and Jude are forbidden a permanent rental lodging because their living arrangement without marriage is considered scandalous. Sue tells Juey that the family cannot stay long at their present lodging because there are too many of them. The next day Sue and Jude return to their lodging to find that Juey has killed his half-siblings and committed suicide, hanging himself. His suicide note says the reason: "Becos we were to menny." Each of the couple falls into a deep depression after the deaths of their children. Turning to the religion she previously rejected, Sue comes to believe that God has judged and punished the couple for not having married. She decides to return to Phillotson, although she finds him sexually repugnant, as he is her true husband in the eyes of God. A year after the death of their children, Jude and Sue happen to meet when separately visiting the tombstones of their children. They both look worse for wear. Jude demands that Sue tell him whether she still loves him, to which she replies, "You've always known". After a passionate kiss, she walks away from Jude to return to Phillotson. As Sue walks away, Jude shouts to her, "We are man and wife, if ever two people were on this earth!" 

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During a trip to India, twenty-something Ruth Barron has a spiritual awakening and embraces the teachings of a guru named Baba. Back home in the Sydney suburb of Sans Souci, her parents are appalled to learn their daughter now answers to the name Nazni and has no intention of returning. They concoct a tale about her father Gilbert having had a stroke and being on the verge of death, and her mother Miriam travels to India in hopes of convincing her to come home, with no success until she suffers a serious asthma attack. Ruth agrees to accompany her to Australia on her return flight. Meanwhile, Miriam has arranged a phony reunion with Gilbert in the Outback, claiming to Ruth that he is recuperating there. Gilbert, as well as Ruth's brothers Robbie—along with his promiscuous wife Yvonne—and Tim—along with his male lover, Yani—all convene at a nearby resort. There, they meet with P.J. Waters, a famous American exit counselor who deprograms members of religious cults. Ruth arrives, and goes to visit her father at a farm; there, she is confronted by her family along with P.J., who have staged an intervention. Ruth is defiant and attempts to fight them, but ultimately relents and agrees to accompany P.J. for a treatment session, under the provision that she may return to India once they have finished. Ruth departs with P.J. to a remote cabin where he isolates her and begins to challenge her faith in Baba, exposing that Baba's doctrines have been directly copied from Hinduism. During the first night, Yvonne, who is staying nearby, arrives to bring a change of clothes for Ruth, and performs oral sex on P.J. The following morning, Ruth is angered when she finds P.J. has strung her sari up in a tree, and retaliates by forming a "HELP" signal out of stones. Later, P.J. takes Ruth to visit her family, and they all screen a documentary exposing the tactics of cults, including the Manson family, Heaven's Gate, and the Rajneesh. That night, after returning to the cabin, P.J. awakens to find a distressed, naked Ruth has lit the tree and her sari on fire. Ruth propositions P.J., and the two have sex. In the morning, Yvonne, Tim, and Yani arrive to bring Ruth to a party, which P.J. accompanies her on. When they return, a drunken Ruth insults P.J.'s manhood before ordering him to perform oral sex on her. The next morning, P.J's assistant and lover, Carol, arrives from the United States, chastising him for screening her phone calls, and demanding he return home. She ultimately agrees to the deprogramming session lasting one more day. Ruth begins to taunt P.J. and emasculates him by making him wear a dress, but relents when he responds by writing the phrase "Be Kind" on her forehead; she is suddenly overcome with guilt and begins crying, confessing that she does not allow anyone to become emotionally close to her. Ruth decides to leave, but P.J., who believes himself to be in love with her, attempts to stop her. The two have a physical altercation in which he punches her, knocking her unconscious. P.J. leaves with an unconscious Ruth in the boot of his car. On the road, he and encounters Tim, Robbie, and Yvonne en route to the cabin. P.J. tells them Ruth has fled, and that they should separate and search for her. Yvonne insists she accompany P.J., who reluctantly allows her in the car. As they drive, Yvonne hears Ruth banging on the lid of the boot, and orders him to stop the car. She lets Ruth out of the boot, and she begins running into the bush, with P.J. pursuing her on foot, proclaiming his love for her. P.J. eventually collapses of exhaustion in the heat, and has a vision of Ruth as the Durga before Yvonne, Tim, and Robbie come to his and Ruth's aid. Ruth departs with Yvonne, Tim, and Robbie, along with P.J., whom they place in the bed of the truck. During the drive, Ruth asks them to stop the truck. She gets into the bed with P.J., and comforts him. A year later, Ruth writes to P.J. from Jaipur, where she is now living with her mother, after her father left her for his secretary. Ruth explains to P.J. that she is still seeking spirituality, and has recently completed reading the Bhagavad Gita. She now has a boyfriend, but confesses she still loves P.J. "from afar." Back in the United States, P.J. responds to Ruth, explaining that he and Carol now have twin sons, though he too confesses a love for her. 

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Calvin Fuller is a nerdy young boy living in the Los Angeles suburb of Reseda who loves baseball, but is not a good player. The gangly, unsure youth is first seen at a game, standing at bat for his team, the Knights, ready for yet another strike out. Suddenly an earthquake hits; as the others run for safety, the ground opens up under Calvin's shoes and he falls through the chasm. He eventually lands on the head of a 6th-century black knight. Upon hearing of his miraculous appearance, the elderly King Arthur, seeing him as the savior whose appearance Merlin has predicted, dubs the boy Calvin of Reseda and invites him to dine with the court. Calvin begins his knight training under Arthur's top knight, Sir Kane, to help the king retain his crown. When the earthquake hit, Calvin had just grabbed his knapsack, a fact that enables him to dazzle the people of Camelot with his futuristic "magic", including an introduction to rock and roll via CD player, and a Swiss Army knife. The young "wizard" also shows them how to make inline roller skates. His work wins him adulation and renown, but it also rouses the jealousy of Lord Belasco, who will use any means to take over the throne. Meanwhile, Calvin finds himself spending time and developing a crush on young Princess Katey, while her elder sister, Sarah, is secretly in love with Sir Kane. Belasco moves forward with his plans and kidnaps Katey and tries to frame Calvin for murder and tells Sarah that if she doesn't marry him, Katey will die. As Belasco is about to arrest Calvin, Sarah rescues him, tells him Katey is alive and to find her father and show him the proof. Calvin goes to Arthur and shows the proof of Belasco's scheme. Playing along, Arthur misdirects the knights and helps Calvin escape and they disguise themselves to go rescue Katey. Walking amongst the people, Calvin tells Arthur that Belasco has been stealing from them for years and they think Arthur doesn't care about them, and Arthur vows to be a better king. Calvin and Arthur find the castle Katey is being held captive; during the fight, Calvin renews Arthur's will to fight by giving him Excalibur (gifted to Calvin by Merlin). They release Katey, but Belasco' second-in-command, Richard, kidnaps her again and holds her hostage over the moat. Calvin uses a laser pointer from his CD player to blind Richard, causing him to fall and save Katey. Arthur knights Calvin as a Knight of the Round Table and arrive back in Camelot to stop Belasco from forcing Sarah into marriage. To take him down for good, they're going to have to face him in a tournament for Sarah's hand. During the tournament, Calvin uses a variety of means to try to defeat Lord Belasco. Sir Kane defeats all the opponents and just him and Lord Belasco are in the finals. Belasco uses a magnifying crystal to use the sunlight to beam it into Kane's eyes and nearly knock him out. Calvin asks the King to stall Belasco. Belasco is close to declaring his victory if Kane doesn't return, but Kane does return and faces him another joust; Belasco knocks Kane's helmet off, but the now headless Kane still jousts and makes a comeback victory by knocking Belasco off his horse. But it isn't Kane, it is Calvin, who pokes his head out from the large armor. Belasco pulls Calvin off the horse and tries to kill him, but a Black Knight that Calvin had seen earlier appears and ambushes Lord Belasco, saving Calvin. Forfeiting his victory to the Black Knight, Calvin, Arthur, and Camelot is surprised to see the knight is Sarah herself; an astounded but happy Arthur rewards his daughter with the right to choose her own hand in marriage, and she proudly chooses Kane. Belasco is banished from Camelot forever. Now that he has helped Arthur keep the crown, Calvin has Merlin uphold his bargain show him his way home, and he sadly bids the king and Katey farewell. He is returned to the 20th century just before the moment when he struck out, and he steps up to the plate: this time, he is ready and hits a home run. He is greeted by his teammates – including a girl who looks like Katey – and is looked on by a spectator who looks like Arthur, who is whittling a piece of wood with a pocketknife – the same knife Calvin gave to King Arthur. 

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The film opens with the song "Trick or Treat for Halloween", the lyrics of which tell the film's moral - one must be generous on Halloween or face trouble. One Halloween night, Witch Hazel observes Huey, Dewey, and Louie trick-or-treating. When the trio go to their uncle Donald Duck's house, Donald decides to prank the boys (giving them a "trick" instead of a treat). So instead of giving them candy, he intentionally puts firecrackers in their bags, then pulls a string that dumps a bucket of water on their heads. After Donald bids farewell to the boys, the discouraged nephews go and sit on the curb. But Hazel, who was watching the drama unfold, approaches the boys and tries to encourage them. When she discovers that they believe in witches, she offers to help them get their treats from Donald after all. At first, she tries to convince Donald herself, but he skeptically retorts, yanks on her stretchy nose, and pranks her as well with a bucket of water, not believing she is a real witch. Realizing that the job may be harder than she anticipated, Hazel tells the boys she will use her magic for this situation. In another location, a scene paying homage to Shakespeare's Macbeth shows Hazel and the nephews concocting a magic potion, adding somewhat more whimsical ingredients than the Three Witches in Macbeth (such as, "Eye of needle, tongue of shoe, hand of clock that points at two!", etc). After testing the potion, Hazel fills an insecticide sprayer (similar in appearance to a Flit gun) with the potion and returns to Donald's house with the nephews. Upon arriving back at Donald's house, Hazel sprays the potion at an assortment of objects (a Jack-o'-lantern, a can of paint, three fence posts, and a gate) causing them to become animated or anthropomorphic. Donald, stunned at the magic being displayed before him, immediately gives in and agrees to treat his nephews, but when Hazel refers to him as a pushover, he changes his mind. Donald then locks his pantry and swallows the key. Hazel then uses the potion on Donald's feet to give her control of their maneuverability, and commands them to kick out the key, causing Donald to perform a crazy dance. But when the key is kicked out, Donald throws it under the pantry door. Enraged, Hazel casts a spell "that's double-grim!" on Donald's feet by spraying them even harder and ordering them to "smash that door down" with Donald. This is initially unsuccessful, so Hazel commands him to take a longer start ('bout a MILE OR TWO!), and he literally runs that far before he breaks down the pantry door and is left unconscious on the floor in defeat. In the end, Huey, Dewey, and Louie collect their treats and Hazel flies off into the night. A final shot shows the enchanted Jack-o'-lantern from earlier suddenly pop onto the screen saying "Boo!" to the viewers before smiling. 

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In late 1960s Joliet, Illinois, Daniel Eugene "Rudy" Ruettiger dreams of playing football at Notre Dame, but lacks the grades and money to attend, and the talent and physical stature to play major college football. Following high school, he works at a steel mill with his father, a Notre Dame fan, and his older brothers. When his supportive best friend Pete is killed in a mill explosion, Rudy decides to follow his dream. In 1972, Rudy visits Notre Dame but is not academically eligible to enroll. With the help of priest Father Cavanaugh, Rudy enrolls at nearby Holy Cross College, hoping to transfer. He approaches Fortune, head groundskeeper at Notre Dame stadium, and is given a job. Homeless, Rudy sneaks into Fortune's office through a window to sleep on a cot; initially indifferent, Fortune later provides him with blankets and a key to the office. Rudy learns Fortune, despite working at the stadium for years, has never seen a Notre Dame football game. Rudy befriends teaching assistant D-Bob, who has him tested for a learning disability. The test results indicate that Rudy suffers from dyslexia, a condition that he overcomes to become a better student. At Christmas, Rudy returns home to find that his family appreciates his college academic achievements, although his brother still mocks him for his attempts to play college football. Rudy persists, and even losing his fiancée to his older brother does not deter him. After two years at Holy Cross and three rejections from Notre Dame, Rudy is finally admitted and attends football tryouts in an attempt to make the team as a "walk-on". Assistant coach Yonto warns the walk-ons that thirty-five scholarship players will not even make the "dress roster" of players who take the field during games, but notices Rudy’s determination and gives him a spot on the daily practice squad. Rudy tells Fortune and persuades him to promise to see his first game. Competing well during practices, Rudy convinces head coach Ara Parseghian to let him suit up for one home game in his senior year, but Coach Parseghian retires following the 1974 season and is replaced by former NFL coach Dan Devine, who refuses to place Rudy on the game day roster. Frustrated that he is not on the dress list for the next-to-last home game, Rudy quits the team. Fortune finds a distraught Rudy and reveals that he actually played for Notre Dame years earlier, but quit when he felt he was being kept from playing due to his skin color and has regretted it ever since. Reminded that he has nothing to prove to anyone but himself and will forever regret quitting, Rudy returns to the team. Each of his fellow seniors, led by team captain and All-American Roland Steele, lines up to lay his jersey on Devine's desk and requests that Rudy be allowed to dress in his place for the season's final game. Devine lets Rudy suit up against Georgia Tech. With Rudy's family and D-Bob in attendance, Steele invites Rudy to lead the team onto the field, and Fortune is there to see the game as promised. With Notre Dame leading 17–3, Devine sends all the seniors into the game except Rudy, despite Steele and the assistant coaches’ urging. Fans are aware of Rudy’s goal from a story in the student newspaper, and a "Rudy!" chant begins in the stadium. Hearing this, the Notre Dame offensive team, led by tailback Jamie O'Hara, overrules Devine's call for victory formation and scores a quick touchdown, providing defensive player Rudy a chance to get in the game and be entered onto the Fighting Irish roster. Devine finally lets Rudy play on the Notre Dame kickoff to Georgia Tech. Rudy stays in for the final play and sacks the Georgia Tech quarterback, and is carried on his teammates' shoulders to cheers from the stadium. An epilogue states that after 1975, no other player for Notre Dame had been carried off the field to the time of the film's release in 1993. Rudy graduated in 1976 and all his younger brothers went on to earn college degrees. 

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An attractive young woman, Myra Breckinridge is a film buff with a special interest in the Golden Age of Hollywood—in particular the 1940s—and the writings of film critic Parker Tyler. She comes to the Academy for Aspiring Young Actors and Actresses, owned by her deceased husband Myron's uncle, Buck Loner. Here, she gets a job teaching, not just her regular classes (Posture and Empathy), but also, as part of the hidden curriculum, female dominance. Still in the process of transitioning from male to female and unable to obtain hormones, Myra transforms into Myron, and, as a result of the injuries she has sustained in a car accident, is forced to have her breast implants removed. Now a eunuch, Myron decides to settle down with Mary-Ann. The spirit of the times is reflected in Myra's attendance at an orgy arranged by a student. She intends only to observe but suffers a "rude intrusion" by a member of the band The Four Skins, from which she derives a perverse, masochistic enjoyment. At an earlier regular party, after "mixing gin and marijuana", she eventually gets "stoned out of her head" and has a fit, before passing out in a bathroom. 

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The novel follows narrator "Philip Roth" on a journey to Israel, where he attends the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk and becomes involved in an intelligence mission—the "Operation Shylock" of the title. While in Israel, the narrator seeks out an impersonator who has appropriated his identity—sharing the same facial features and name as Philip Roth—and used this celebrity to spread "Diasporism," a counter-Zionist ideology advocating the return of Israeli Jews to their European nations of exile. The ensuing struggle between this doppelgänger-like stranger and "Roth," played against the backdrop of the Demjanjuk trial and the First Intifada, constitutes the book's primary storyline. 

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Alida Valli (1947) In London, Maddalena Anna Paradine (Alida Valli) is a very beautiful and enigmatic young Italian woman who is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband, a wealthy retired colonel. It is not clear whether she is a grateful and devoted wife who has been falsely charged or a calculating and ruthless femme fatale. Mrs. Paradine's solicitor, Sir Simon Flaquer (Charles Coburn), hires Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck), a brilliant and successful barrister, to defend her in court. Although Keane has been happily married for 11 years, he instantly becomes deeply infatuated with this exotic, mysterious, and fascinating client. Keane's kind-hearted wife, Gay (Ann Todd), sees his obsession, and although he offers to relinquish the case, presses him to continue. She knows that a "guilty" verdict, followed by Mrs. Paradine's hanging, will mean that she will lose her husband emotionally forever. The only way that she can regain her husband's love and devotion is if he is able to obtain a "not guilty" verdict for Mrs. Paradine. Meanwhile, Keane himself starts to focus his legal efforts on Colonel Paradine's mysterious servant, André Latour (Louis Jourdan). Consciously or subconsciously, Keane sees Latour as a suitable scapegoat on whom he can pin the crime of murder, but this strategy backfires. After Keane has pressured Latour in court, triggering an angry outburst, word comes that Latour has killed himself. Mrs. Paradine is coldly furious that Keane has destroyed Latour, who was, in fact, her lover. On the witness stand, she tells Keane that she hates him and that he has murdered the only person she loved. She goes so far as to say that she poisoned her husband in order to be with Latour. Keane is overwhelmed, physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Attempting to summarize, he improvises a brief and faltering speech, admitting how poorly he has handled the case, but cannot continue speaking, and has to leave the court. He stays overnight at Sir Simon's office, feeling that his career is in ruins. His wife finds him there; she offers reconciliation, and hope for the future. 

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Born in 1864 to a clergyman and his dutiful wife, Virginia grows up as a Southern belle in the town of Dinwiddie, Virginia. Her education is strictly limited to the bare minimum, with anything that might disturb her quiet and comfortable existence vigorously avoided. Thus prepared for life, Virginia falls for the first handsome young man who crosses her path—Oliver Treadwell, the black sheep of a family of capitalist entrepreneurs who, during the time of Reconstruction, brought industry and the railroad to the South. Oliver, who has been abroad and has only recently arrived in Dinwiddie, is a dreamer and an intellectual. An aspiring playwright, his literary ambitions are more important to him than money, and he refuses his uncle's offer to work in his bank. However, when Virginia falls in love with him he realizes that he must be able to support a family, and eventually accepts his uncle's offer to work for the railroad. The young couple get married and have three children, a boy and two girls. Gradually perfecting her household skills, Virginia is able to get by on very little money. When, after many years, Oliver's first play is put on the stage in New York City, his expectations are high. However, the show is a complete failure as the play is far too intellectual and radical for a Broadway audience who wants to be entertained rather than reformed. Reading about the flop in the local newspaper, Virginia for the first time in her life leaves her children, asking her mother to take care of them for a day or two, and takes the night train to New York to be with, and console, her husband—only to be rejected by him, who is in a state of severe depression. When he has recovered from the shock, Oliver makes yet another concession to society and public taste and starts writing "trash". The Alexander Strachan House, Petersburg, which figures in the novelBiallas, Randall J. "Data Sheet: Dr. Alexander Glass Strachan House". Historic American Buildings Survey, 1968-08, 4. Throughout the years, Virginia leads a vicarious life: She is happy when her husband and children are happy; she makes sure their clothes are in perfect condition while neglecting her own outward appearance; and she is eager to provide for her children the education she herself has been denied. When, at one point, she realizes that the women her age whom she has known since childhood still look quite young while she has aged prematurely, she quickly persuades herself to believe that a life of altruistic subservience is more than worthwhile, that living and acting the way she does is her duty and God's will. Her father's sudden if honourable death—he unsuccessfully tries to prevent the lynching of an innocent young African American and is stabbed in the process by an angry and drunken young man—adds to the gloom that starts creeping into her life, especially when she sees that, as a widow, her mother suddenly loses all her will to live. When she dies only a few months after her husband, Virginia has a premonition that her own fate when losing Oliver could be a similar one. Meanwhile, Oliver's first successful play—a trashy one—premières in New York, with some more to follow in quick succession, and, as the money keeps pouring in, the family move into a bigger house in Dinwiddie. They now employ a number of servants, including an African American butler. With the children gone—their son and one daughter are at college, while the other daughter has married a much older widower with two grown-up children and has also flown the nest—and Oliver frequently in New York to supervise the staging of his plays, Virginia's life becomes increasingly empty. Having "outlived her usefulness", the days seem endless to her, and with all the servants about the house there is absolutely no housework for her to do either. Now in her mid- forties, Virginia for the first time in her life spends Christmas alone at home. The biggest blow, however, is yet to come: When she accompanies Oliver to New York for a première, she finds out to her dismay that he has been betraying her with a famous actress who stars in one of his plays. For the last time summoning up all her courage, she takes a taxi and pays her an unexpected call but immediately realizes when talking to her that she has no chance of winning her husband back. Without many words, Oliver asks her to let him divorce her, but clinging to the only thing she has left in her life—her marriage—she refuses. The novel ends on a somewhat optimistic note when Virginia, again alone in the empty house in Dinwiddie, receives a letter from her son telling her that he is going to leave Oxford before he has completed his two-year course at the university in order to come back and stay with his mother. 

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The narrator is Jean Ange, alias John Angelos, born in Avignon. Prior to the events of the novel, he had been a friend of Sultan Murad II and then also of his son, Mehmed II; but once Mehmed had begun his march to Constantinople, Ange fled there. The novel begins as Jean Ange meets Anna Notaras in Constantinople and they fall instantly in love. At first Ange is unaware of her identity, but later he realises she is the daughter of megas doux Lucas Notaras. Ange is committed to fight to the death on the side of the Christians against the Islamic Ottoman forces. Nevertheless, his prior relationship with Mehmed earns him constant distrust from both Latin and Greek Christians. Eventually Jean Ange is revealed as a rightful heir of Byzantine emperors, although he has no interest in power. Constantinople ultimately falls under Mehmed's attack, Anna dies while in the disguise of a soldier, and Jean is tortured to death by Mehmed. 

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After the wedding-day murder of his wife, Tracy (see On Her Majesty's Secret Service), Bond begins to let his life slide, drinking and gambling heavily, making mistakes and turning up late for work. His superior in the Secret Service, M, had been planning to dismiss Bond, but decides to give him a last-chance opportunity to redeem himself by assigning him to the diplomatic branch of the organisation. Bond is subsequently re-numbered 7777 and handed an "impossible" mission: convincing the head of Japan's secret intelligence service, Tiger Tanaka, to provide Britain with information from radio transmissions captured from the Soviet Union, codenamed Magic 44. In exchange, the Secret Service will allow the Japanese access to one of their own information sources. Blofeld's Samurai armour would have protected him from the poisonous plants. Bond is introduced to Tanaka—and to the Japanese lifestyle—by an Australian intelligence officer, Dikko Henderson. When Bond raises the purpose of his mission with Tanaka, it transpires that the Japanese have already penetrated the British information source and Bond has nothing left to bargain with. Instead, Tanaka asks Bond to kill Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who operates a politically embarrassing "Garden of Death" in a rebuilt ancient castle on the island of Kyushu; people flock there to commit suicide. After examining photos of Shatterhand and his wife, Bond discovers that "Shatterhand" and his wife are Tracy's murderers, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Irma Bunt. Bond gladly takes the mission, keeping his knowledge of Blofeld's identity a secret so that he can exact revenge for his wife's death. Made up and trained by Tanaka, and aided by former Japanese film star Kissy Suzuki, Bond attempts to live and think as a mute Japanese coal miner in order to penetrate Shatterhand's castle. Tanaka renames Bond "Taro Todoroki" ("First son of thunder") for the mission. After infiltrating the Garden of Death and the castle where Blofeld spends his time dressed in the costume of a Samurai warrior, Bond is captured and Bunt identifies him as a British secret agent and not a Japanese coal miner. After surviving a near execution, Bond exacts revenge on Blofeld in a duel, Blofeld armed with a sword and Bond with a wooden staff. Bond eventually kills Blofeld by strangling him with his bare hands in a fit of violent rage, then blows up the castle. Upon escaping, he suffers a head injury, leaving him an amnesiac living as a Japanese fisherman with Kissy, while the rest of the world believes him dead; his obituary appears in the newspapers. While Bond's health improves, Kissy conceals his true identity to keep him forever to herself. Kissy eventually sleeps with Bond and becomes pregnant, and hopes that Bond will propose marriage after she finds the right time to tell him about her pregnancy. Bond reads scraps of newspaper and fixates on a reference to Vladivostok, making him wonder if the far-off city is the key to his missing memory; he tells Kissy he must travel to Russia to find out. 

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An extremely contagious and lethal strain of influenza is developed as a biological weapon in a secret U.S. Department of Defense laboratory. It is estimated to be 99.4% fatal. The Complete and Uncut Edition includes a prologue detailing the development of the virus and the security breach that causes its accidental release. Security guard Charles Campion manages to escape before the facility is locked down and takes his family out of the state. After a couple of days, his car crashes at a gas station in Arnette, Texas. Bystanders and ambulance workers become infected by the dying Campion and his dead wife and child. The United States Army attempts to isolate Arnette, going so far as to execute civilians attempting to flee, but in vain; the virus, christened the "superflu" or "Captain Trips", spreads across the country. The government then has its agents (unknowingly) release the virus in the USSR, its satellite countries and China to avoid blame and retaliation. When martial law fails to contain the virus, a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions kills nearly the entire world population within a month. Society collapses with the near- extinction of humanity. Some of the few who are immune also die, unable either to accept the loss of their loved ones or to survive in a world where they must fend for themselves. Stuart "Stu" Redman, one of the Arnette residents who encountered Campion, proves immune to the virus. He is forcibly held in a research center in Stovington, Vermont, in the hope that a treatment can be found. Stu escapes after the staff become infected, killing one man in self- defense. He meets sociology professor Glen Bateman and his dog Kojak, pregnant college student Frances "Frannie" Goldsmith, and overweight teenage nerd Harold Lauder. Stuart and Frannie are drawn to each other and eventually fall in love, then enter a marital relationship. This enrages Harold, who has an unhealthy limerence towards Frannie. He then becomes sociopathic and schemes to harm the couple. Most of the survivors experience essentially the same two dreams. In one, a friendly 108-year-old black woman living in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, "Mother Abagail" Freemantle, invites them to her farm.King used Hemingford for the novel It as well. The Denver Post, USA Weekend, March 19–20, 2010, usaweekend.com, page 2. They also dream of a terrifying "dark man" who calls himself Randall Flagg, among other things. People seek out one or the other. Stu and his group eventually meet Mother Abagail, who is convinced God has chosen her to do His will. The group travels to Boulder, Colorado, along with other survivors. These include Larry Underwood, a disillusioned pop singer; Nick Andros, a deaf-mute; Tom Cullen, a kind- hearted, mentally disabled man; Nadine Cross, a teacher in her 30s who is still a virgin; and Ralph Brentner, a good-natured farmer. As survivors continue to trickle in, the group starts organizing the hundreds of residents. They establish their community as the "Boulder Free Zone", a democratic city- state modeled after the United States' former ideals. Meanwhile, Randall Flagg, who possesses supernatural abilities, creates his own totalitarian society in Las Vegas with psychopaths as his lieutenants. His people worship (and fear) him as a messiah and submit to his iron-fisted dictatorship. He has drug addicts and others who incur his displeasure crucified. Flagg rescues Lloyd Henreid, a mass murderer, from his prison cell and makes him his right- hand man. A pyromaniac nicknamed "the Trashcan Man" blows up oil tanks in Gary, Indiana, and travels to Las Vegas with a homicidal madman named "the Kid". The Trashcan Man finds stockpiles of weapons for Flagg, as Flagg prepares for war with the Free Zone. Mother Abagail, believing that she has sinned by being proud, goes into the wilderness on a spiritual journey without consulting anyone. In her absence, the Free Zone's leadership committee decides to secretly send three people to spy on Flagg, but Flagg already knows who two of them are. One dies in a shootout and the other is captured, but manages to kill herself to avoid revealing who the third (Tom Cullen) is. Harold and Nadine secretly give their allegiance to Flagg. In fact, Flagg wants Nadine to be his wife and the mother of his child. Harold plants a bomb in the house where the committee is to meet. The explosion kills seven or eight people, including Nick Andros and Susan Stern, but the other committee members are saved by the commotion caused by Mother Abagail's unexpected return and Frannie's too-late warning. Before dying, the extremely emaciated Mother Abagail reports God's will: Stu, Glen, Larry and Ralph (all of the surviving committee members except for the pregnant Frannie) must go to Las Vegas on foot to destroy Flagg. She also states that only three of them will get there. Harold and Nadine also set out for Las Vegas, but Harold suffers a broken leg in a motorcycle accident (caused by Flagg with his powers) on the way, and Nadine leaves him to die. Flagg comes to Nadine in the desert near Las Vegas and impregnates her; the horrifying experience (his face changes into that of a demon) causes her to lose her mind. Flagg brings her back to Las Vegas as his bride, but she manages to goad him into killing her and their unborn child. Stu breaks his leg en route to Las Vegas and persuades the others to go on without him. The remaining three are quickly taken prisoner. Glen refuses to grovel before Flagg, and when he taunts Flagg, Lloyd kills him under Flagg's orders. Flagg gathers his people to witness Larry and Ralph's executions. Moments before they are about to be torn apart via dismemberment, the Trashcan Man drags in a nuclear warhead (to try to atone for having blown up all of Flagg's experienced pilots), and an act of God detonates the bomb, destroying Las Vegas, as well as Larry and Ralph. The inhabitants of Boulder anxiously await the birth of Frannie's baby. They fear that the child will succumb to the superflu. Soon after her son is born, Stu returns, having been rescued by Tom. The baby contracts the superflu, but manages to recover. Once Frannie is again pregnant, she and Stu decide to leave Boulder and move back to Frannie's hometown of Ogunquit, Maine, where they will found an eastern settlement, and raise their children in peace. The Complete and Uncut Edition includes an epilogue in which Flagg wakes up with memory loss on a beach. From the jungle emerge a dozen dark-skinned men with spears who eventually bow down and worship him. 

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At the White House, brainwashed teleporting mutant Nightcrawler attacks the President of the United States. He is shot and retreats. Meanwhile, Logan explores an abandoned military installation at Alkali Lake in Alberta for clues to his past, but finds nothing. Jean Grey has been having premonitions and struggles to concentrate as her powers become increasingly difficult to control. Later, Logan returns to Professor Xavier's school for mutants, and Xavier tracks Nightcrawler using Cerebro. Xavier and Cyclops go to question the imprisoned Magneto about the attack, while X-Men Storm and Jean Grey retrieve Nightcrawler. Military scientist Colonel William Stryker approaches the president and receives approval to investigate Xavier's mansion for their ties to mutants in the wake of the recent attack. Stryker's forces invade the school and abduct some of the students. Colossus leads the remaining students to safety while Logan, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro escape, and Stryker's assistant Yuriko Oyama captures Cyclops and Xavier. During the attack, Logan confronts Stryker, who addresses him as Wolverine and seems to know about his past. The shape-shifting Mystique gains information about Magneto's prison and helps him escape while also discovering schematics for a second Cerebro. Logan, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro visit Iceman's parents in Boston and meet up with Storm, Jean, and Nightcrawler. The X-Jet is attacked by fighter jets while flying back to the mansion and is shot down, but Magneto saves them from crashing. Magneto explains to the group that Stryker has built the second Cerebro to use it and Xavier to telepathically kill every mutant on the planet. Stryker's son, Jason, is a mutant with mind-controlling powers, whom Stryker will use to force Xavier to do this. Stryker had also previously used Jason's powers to orchestrate Nightcrawler's attack as a pretense to gain approval to invade Xavier's mansion. Magneto also tells Wolverine that Stryker was the man who grafted his adamantium skeleton onto his bones and is responsible for his amnesia. Jean reads Nightcrawler's mind and determines that Stryker's base is underground in a dam at Alkali Lake. Disguised as Logan, Mystique infiltrates Stryker's base. She lets the rest of the mutants in and Magneto and Mystique go to disable Cerebro before the brainwashed Xavier can activate it. Storm and Nightcrawler rescue the captured students, and Jean fights a mind-controlled Cyclops; their battle frees Cyclops but damages the dam, which begins to rupture. Logan finds Stryker in an adamantium smelting lab and remembers it as where he received his adamantium skeleton. Logan fights and kills Yuriko, then chases Stryker to a helicopter pad and chains him to the helicopter's wheel. Magneto stops Cerebro and, using Mystique impersonating Stryker to command Jason, has Xavier redirect its powers on normal humans. The two subsequently use Stryker's helicopter to escape, accompanied by Pyro, who has been swayed to Magneto's views. Nightcrawler teleports Storm inside Cerebro, where she creates a snowstorm to break Jason's concentration and free Xavier from his control. The X-Men flee the dam as water engulfs it, killing Stryker, but the X-Jet loses all power and struggles to take flight as the flood water rushes towards them. Jean sneaks off the jet and telepathically wishes the team goodbye. She holds back the water and raises the jet above it as flames erupt from her body, until she lets go and allows the flood to crash down upon her, presumably killing her. The X-Men give the president Stryker's files, and Xavier warns him that humans and mutants must work together to build peace. Back at the school, Xavier, Cyclops, and Logan remember Jean, and Xavier begins to hold a class. Meanwhile, a Phoenix-like shape rises from the flooded Alkali Lake. 

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Gia Carangi is a Philadelphia native who moves to New York City to become a fashion model, and immediately catches the attention of powerful agent Wilhelmina Cooper. Gia's attitude and beauty help her rise quickly to the forefront of the modeling industry, but her persistent loneliness, especially after the death of Wilhelmina, drives her to experiment with mood-altering drugs such as cocaine and heroin. She becomes entangled in a passionate affair with Linda, a make-up artist. Their love affair first starts when both pose nude for a photo shoot and make love afterward. Gia tries to get clean and begins taking methadone. However, Gia eventually starts using again, and Linda gives her an ultimatum. Gia chooses the drugs. Failed attempts at reconciliation with Linda and with her mother, Kathleen, drive Gia back to heroin. Although she is eventually able to break her drug habit after much effort, she has already contracted HIV from intravenous drug use, which has progressed to AIDS. She spends the remainder of her life in the hospital. 

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